Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: You're listening to the Inverse Podcast, where we explore how the scriptures can turn our world upside down or how it.
[00:00:07] Speaker B: Can be weaponized to uphold the status quo. I'm Drew Hart.
[00:00:11] Speaker A: And I'm Jared McKenna, and this is Inverse.
[00:00:23] Speaker B: Today, we want to lean into what's going on in Minneapolis. And so today we've invited a friend, Doug Padgett, who is an American pastor, author, and social activist who serves as the co founder and executive director of Boat Common Good, a national nonprofit that inspires and equips people of faith to engage in civic life for the sake of the common good.
Doug has been a leading voice in progressive Christianity and progressive evangelical circles.
He's spent decades working at the intersection of faith and politics, including founding Solomon's Perch Porch, a holistic missional Christian community in Minneapolis, and the Greater Things foundation, which supports more just and inclusive expressions of Christianity, of Christian community.
Doug is also the author of many books and a leader and someone that we know is also in Minneapolis right now has been on the ground and wanted to just have a conversation with him. And so, Doug, welcome to Inverse Podcast. It's really good to see you again, Drew.
[00:01:27] Speaker C: So good to see you. Thank you for that introduction, Jared. Great to be with you.
[00:01:31] Speaker A: Of course, mate. Yeah. I'm sorry it's under these circumstances. Usually, Doug, we might talk about your work, and your work's incredibly important. Maybe we'll leave that for another time, because I know you know, the. The home of Prince, we otherwise might be talking about that beautiful skyline, the coldest city in America, and yet at the start of 2026, here in Australia, we have watched a mother be murdered in her car in front of the love of her life.
[00:02:04] Speaker B: And.
[00:02:06] Speaker A: It'S this horrific window into what's happening in your nation and what's happening around the world at the moment. So given you're on the ground and given that you love. Well, in private and in public, something that Drew and I both deeply respect, we were keen to talk with you and just kind of hear A, how you're going, and B, what's your read on your own city in this moment and what it means for the rest of us?
[00:02:32] Speaker C: Yeah, well, thanks for the chance to talk about this.
It means a lot, frankly, to me personally, to be the friend of so many for whom Minneapolis is their connection. You know, that I'm their connection here. I totally get that.
You know, we all. Many of us do work in lots of places in the country, around the world.
A lot of us talk to our screens. We talk into microphones and make content that we send around.
But we're all of a place. We all live somewhere. And this is my place. And this has been where I've been my whole life, with the exception of a little two year stint in Texas. And these are the streets that I walk on. The place where Renee Goode was murdered is a place I've stood countless times.
Many people probably know it's just around the corner, just a few blocks away from where George Floyd was murdered. Yeah, it's just adjacent from a fantastic church called Park Avenue United Methodist Church. It's right at Kitty corner from the parking lot.
Like it's. It's just this sweet little, little home. And for us to watch the federal government of the United States send thousands of masked, armed, poorly trained militia into our city is devastating.
I've spent a lot of time being an anti ICE activist against the behavior of ice.
I've spent time on the border, I've spent time at detention centers in other cities talking with ICE agents, talking with Homeland Security people. I mean, just try to do all of it. But when they show up in our city, rev their engines and their trucks, pull up their masks and pull their guns out and shoot one of the citizens of this city in the face three times, point blank range, we realize that there are nearly no bounds to it. So thank you for letting me talk about it.
I am of the more protected people in this city from the activities of ice.
I have two adult sons who are Mexican in heritage, and I worry about them. One of them is a delivery person who drives the city and he is scared.
The other, frankly, he's not ashamed of me saying this. He would have no reason to be. But he is a big ICE supporter and a big Donald Trump supporter. And so the complexities of all these issues, you know, are personal. They're familial.
I didn't have the privilege of knowing Renee Goode, but I know many other people who are being gathered up by ICE agents and it's terrible. It's just, frankly, in my view, clearly un American, clearly immoral, and it's no way to execute the laws of the United States of America.
So, okay, so we can talk about that. If you want to talk about some of the specific things we're seeing, what people are doing. There are, of course, great things that people are doing in this city.
You know, unfortunately, when I went down the day that Renee was killed, I don't know, about 10 o' clock in the morning, I think I heard about it, tried to figure out where Things were happening. By 1:00 clock or 12:30, I was down on the site of the murder.
And many of the people that were there are the other city activists, the other city engaged people, the other city faith leaders, where we recognize each other, we talk to each other, and had that feeling of here we go again, wow.
And so there's something wonderful about the fact that there's a half a decade long set of relationships that people are living into.
It's also terrible that that has to be the case.
And someone turned me on to the notion of slave patrols as a picture of what we're seeing as opposed to some of the other narratives that we turn to, like what happened in Germany or somewhere else. And it just, it maps for me that that's what this feels like. Armed people, barely trained, with no real authority, asking for people's papers, determining based on the color of skin, if they will determine if a person is in the appropriate place and saying the right thing and moving in the right way. And that is something that we've wanted to leave behind in the history of this country, and we clearly have not.
And it's, I don't know, it's shameful and it's embarrassing. And so all the emotions that people have, anger and fear and shame and disbelief and frankly, just a level of being disillusioned, which, frankly, for a lot of, a lot of years after Donald Trump's election, I thought maybe being disillusioned is a good thing because your illusions can really catch up to you.
But there are some things I don't want to be disillusioned in. And sure, the fear that people have and watching our neighbors here gather up and, you know, like everywhere in the world, people are whimsical too. You know, they're putting out, it snows a lot here and it's icy and it's frozen. So we have, we have ice melt here, which are big buckets of like rock salt and stuff that you put out. So people are taking ice melt buckets and putting whistles on lanyards in them. So you see ice melt with whistles in it because people are blowing whistles whenever they see ice agents and they surround the car and they let everybody around know and they're calling attention to it.
And when the ice agents are telling those people to stop announcing their arrival, you know something's wrong. You know, it's not law enforcement. Law enforcement doesn't want to operate as secret police.
So, so people are doing that. They're gathering together to cook meals. There's community kitchens popping up, cooking meals and delivering them in secret to people hiding away in their homes.
American citizens, by the way, hiding in their homes, feeling afraid to leave because they don't know if they're going to be detained.
ICE is bragging about 2,000 arrests and more than half of those people are estimating are American citizens that have been detained. Yeah, it's just, it's unthinkable that this is happening.
And this is just Minneapolis. It happened in Portland, it happened in Chicago, it happened in Charlotte, it happened in Raleigh, it's going to be happened in Los Angeles, it's going to happen in other places.
So there's a great cloud of witnesses in this country that are watching these things happen and it's, it's actually quite, quite terrible.
[00:09:26] Speaker B: Yeah.
I mean, I don't even know what to add to that other than it's been just the other day, brain's going in all different directions. But I had watched the video of the young Somali American man who was arrested, who's a citizen and, and it just shows just the complete chaos and terrorism that's being executed in this moment and how vulnerable. I mean it's, it.
Despite the rhetoric of them targeting a particular population. I mean it's just everyone.
And it is also. Right. Political payback. Right. For a Democrat led majority city leadership in the state, all of that kind of stuff. But, but, and one of the things me and Jared were saying is, you know, one of the things that it, that is horrifying about it is the way in which, I mean on one hand, like I've shared many times about, I've had a brother arrested off the street wrongfully. Right. Because he was black and he fit the description and another brother picked up for possession.
But the way in which it's just wholesale being extended out and half the country is, or maybe not half, it's less than half the country, but are nonetheless supporting the chaos, the cruelty, the meanness and the harm that's being caused.
Yeah, it's.
I do feel like there's something about Minneapolis right now that seems like this is a critical moment and the resistance that happening is also so really important in the midst of all that's been unfolding over the. Since the administration started. Yeah.
[00:11:20] Speaker C: You know, Minnesota is often referred to by this sort of whimsical self own statement called being Minnesota Nice. There's kind of a Midwestern nicety to it.
And look, there's a lot of ways people live. You know, you sort of get a Southern hospitality. You might Get a California laid back, you might get an east coast edge. Well, you have a middle Midwestern, especially Minnesota. Nice.
And when you watch these people rally together.
I was down. We were doing actions outside the hotel. One of the hotels where ICE agents are sleeping in Minneapolis.
Let them not sleep well, at least in the evening now, people who are concerned.
So anyway, what we're doing is out there making a bunch of noise. People with drums and banging on pots and pans and people with bands and drum kit and just making reckless noise.
[00:12:11] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:12:12] Speaker C: And the people running it are great. They're like, hey, you know, like kind of apologizing and saying this is non violent action. And like we're trying to model a way to not match the violence with the violence because our city has pushed back with the violence, you know, five years ago in the middle of it, and watched, you know, targets burned to the ground and watched.
And that was all being instigated by the right wingers that came into our city, burned our city. I mean, it was unbelievable.
And people aren't going to let that happen this time. There, there is a, a resilience that is nice, but it's not going to tolerate. It's not going to tolerate this. And you know, you saw a man throw. People throw snowballs at ice ages. I don't know if you saw those videos. And yeah, yeah, triggering these guys to go chase people down the street because he got someone threw at them.
It's, it's madness. Like they are, they're dangerous because it's, it's unbridled power.
You know, when, when the Vice President of the United States, who actually has no constitutional power yet he's in a ceremonial role.
Right.
The Vice President doesn't do anything unless he's overseeing the Senate. Sort of how it works here, Jade. You probably keep up on American, how the American political system works. But anyway, when that guy, even if.
[00:13:42] Speaker A: We don't want to, we have to.
[00:13:43] Speaker C: That's what. My deepest apologies.
When that guy uses his position, ceremonial position as Vice President of the United States to say ICE agents have full immunity, they don't. I mean, diplomats get full immunity. That's it.
Nobody else gets full immunity. This kind of like just madness is meant to terrorize these people. And they may have the guns, as the saying goes, but we have the numbers.
And they might have the zip ties, but we have the moral clarity.
And many of us are calling for our governor and for our mayor, who also command agents of law enforcement and military garb to do something.
Because, look, even an ICE agent has to put their hand up and vow to faithfully administer the laws.
If you watch the videos that we've all watched and think, think that is faithfully administering the laws. Now look, I am bothered by the fact that these jokers come in and tell us that people have to obey all the laws and they were sent here by a 34 time convicted felon. So I'm a little, a little thrown off and confused by their overall commitment to law following.
But when they come in and say these people have to follow the laws, meanwhile they don't in the execution of apprehending people who they say have violated civil laws.
This is the kind of madness that, you know, frankly, we were accused of in 2018, 2016, 2019. Like, hey, you all have, you know, you're all really overplaying it. And we were all saying in 2023 and 2024, and now people act like it was, you know, you couldn't have seen this coming. And that's, that's a little hard to swallow.
[00:15:37] Speaker A: Well, Doug, what I so appreciate about your organic analysis and I can, I can feel the, the pain as you talk about it as well. This is an abstract for you. This is your backyard is the, the link you made to the slave patrols. And this is something that Drew, in his analysis of what it is to be faithful today, does such a good job in the US context in talking about that these patterns. This isn't fascism coming to the usa. This is a return to fascism.
People will quickly go to Nazi Germany and not realize that they were taking notes from how first nations and African American people were treated in the United States of America as a model for them.
And I really appreciate that you've named that. And no, this is part of the story that we don't want to look at. Another part that, particularly having you with us, is of course the role that religion and the scriptures play.
Maybe it would be helpful to actually ground and see if we can take back ground by actually lifting up a passage and reframing that in light of these realities.
Did you have a particular passage in mind that you'd like to read at the outset?
[00:17:07] Speaker C: Yeah, I'd be glad to. This is a passage that we used in the faith community that I was the pastor of that Drew mentioned called Solomon's Porch.
At the end of every gathering, we would stand together and read this doxology.
It comes from one of the smallest books in the whole Bible, a little short one chapter letter called the Book of Jude, which is actually a very funky Little odd letter.
Care for the whole thing, but the doxology seems like it was something that might have been around in the early days of early faith. And then was attached to the end of the letter and reads this to the one who is able to keep us from falling and to present you before the Holy One's glorious presence without fault and with great joy to the only God our Savior. Be glory, majesty, power and authority through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages now and forevermore.
And that's just, I mean, I, I've heard that said in unison for 20 plus years on a weekly basis. So I don't know, 20 times, 40 or 50, like so, so many times. And there's a, to me, in my own experience with it, there's a sensitivity and a sweetness. And I've spent a lot of time thinking about sort of every, every word, you know, in it. And so I just have lots of thoughts about what that, what that kind of a Christian faith would call someone to.
[00:18:53] Speaker B: That's good.
Well, we're definitely looking forward to hearing more about that and so we can allow our listeners to sit with that for a little bit. But, but I would like to turn us to a little bit of your story and hear when do you remember first encountering the Bible? Any stories, memories that come to mind?
[00:19:12] Speaker C: So, yes, I could tell you date, time and hour. I grew up in a family with no religion at all. We didn't go to church. We didn't think about going to church. Like, I never skipped church as a kid because church wasn't something we went to. I didn't skip synagogue and I didn't skip the mosque. I didn't skip any of those because it wasn't, you know, But I never went and I had no religious orientation.
When I was 16, someone invited me to go to a, an event being held at a church in downtown Minneapolis, just a few miles from where all this, the center of all this activity was actually just around the corner from where I was out making a bunch of noise keeping ICE agents awake. And it was in the then State Theater. It was a church run by a group called the Jesus People. So this is 1983. So, you know, it's a decade after the, after the Jesus movement sort of was in its heyday. But I'll tell you, at this age, I now think a decade is not so long.
[00:20:12] Speaker A: Yeah, sure.
[00:20:13] Speaker C: You know what I'm saying?
[00:20:14] Speaker A: Yeah, totally.
[00:20:16] Speaker C: It was, it was less than 10 years ago when Donald Trump came on the scene. So like, you know, Jesus period from 1983 to 1973. Now in my life I feel like that's not that long. I've, you know.
But anyway, I went to this and it was a Passion play, which I heard the name did. Had no idea what that meant. I knew nothing of the Christian story.
I didn't know the connection between Christmas and Easter. I didn't know.
I didn't know that. I mean, frankly, never thought of those even as religious holidays.
[00:20:49] Speaker A: You know, they're just so.
[00:20:50] Speaker C: Anyway, I didn't know anything.
I watched this whole story unfold in a play.
I see Jesus defending the weak. I see Jesus on the side of God. I had a lot of God thoughts, but I didn't have any Christian content that went with it.
I saw how the abusers were abusing the one who was on the side of God. That story connected to me and my own stories of harshness and abuse in my life and that I felt solidarity with that story.
When Jesus is on the cross and they make a big deal out of that in the Passion play, that's kind of the, you know, when he yells, father, forgive them for they don't know what they're doing.
That became an alternative narrative to me in that very moment. That rather than retribution, rather than violence, rather than fight back, rather than destroy the oppressor, there's another path and another way.
I was hooked right then. Like, that's a story that made sense to me. I had no idea the resurrection was coming.
I just didn't.
[00:21:55] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:21:57] Speaker C: Like, it's super hard for people who don't know this stuff to like, yeah.
And then I'm like, okay, then there's that, you know, and then Jesus is going around at the end of that thing and he's not. And I, you know, I'm thinking, I'm just noticing as a 16 year old kid, like, he's not, he's not taking retribution on people. He's not visiting the, the soldiers, you know.
[00:22:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:22:23] Speaker C: And casting retribution.
So they have an altar call, which I didn't know that's what it was. But they're like, hey, if you, if you like this something version of if you like this story, want to talk to somebody, Come on. So I get up and I go down there. So honestly, I swear to you, this is as true as I can remember it. We go in the back of the stage, we sit down in these circles. Like there's chairs. I don't know, there's 30 or 40 people back there.
Somebody's leading the circle. They hand out little booklets I remember seeing the little booklets and in it there's some version of that bridge illustration where you have God on one side and humanity on the other side in a chasm.
And I remember them like going through this and I'm looking at this, this thing and I'm like wondering, did you people see the story that was happening on the stage out there? Because out there God wasn't separate. Like that was the whole point of the story out there.
[00:23:17] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:23:18] Speaker C: So when you say, do you remember? And then there were little Bible verses, then they read me some Bible verse that was taken out. Now I know it's taken out of context.
I started arguing with people's interpretation of the Bible. I swear to you, within the first five minutes I'm in a Christian meeting.
That is just not what happened out there, you know.
[00:23:37] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:23:38] Speaker C: So the next morning I remember waking up, I feel a spiritual thing happening.
For some reason. Maybe someone at that place said something about this, I should go get a Bible. But I wanted to go get a Bible.
And the only one I'd ever seen was in my house.
I don't know why it was in there, I couldn't find it. But was the kind that had the, the passage index down the middle, like the reference index down the middle. Now I know it's probably some new American Standard Version where they put the Thompson chain reference down the, down the middle of the passage. You had passage on both sides and it had red lighter, it had red print in it. I just kind of remember that being inside of a Bible.
So I knew where there was a Christian bookstore because it was next to another store that I had that I would go to.
So I drove to this Christian bookstore and I walked in, I said I need to buy a Bible and I want it to look like the one that you know, for some reason I'm not. Also not a formed an opinion about what kind of Bible I should have. So the guy said, I think it.
[00:24:37] Speaker A: Should be this one.
[00:24:38] Speaker C: He sells me a leather bound Bible. So he really upsold me. And then he sold me a picture of Jesus, kind of the 1983 window.
[00:24:47] Speaker B: Head of Christ, picture of Jesus, the.
[00:24:49] Speaker C: Kind of funky looking.
And a Keith Green album, a no compromise album by a musician called Keith Great. So that's what I got. I've got a friend that took me.
[00:24:59] Speaker A: Who looked a lot like white Jesus.
[00:25:01] Speaker C: I got a, I got a white Jesus looks an awful lot like me at the same age. I shot pictures of me at the same like that. I get, I got a Bible and A Keith Green album. And I went home and started reading it and started finding my way around and, you know, like people who say I went into a guitar store and bought a guitar and started listening to the albums and putting them back and forth and figuring it out, I just went in deep and so, yeah, look, the Bible for me has been a story of liberation. It's been a prime metaphor of hope. It's been a big story to find myself in and to find the human passion and human story all throughout it and connecting it to now. I love the Bible. I spend a lot of time with it. I have no emotional trauma around the Bible. So such a different experience than so many people whose experience with the Bible was that someone was misusing it.
[00:25:59] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:26:00] Speaker C: For me, it felt like a treasure I had stumbled onto.
And then life sort of went from there and I stayed involved in a whole lot of things. And within weeks and months, I'm deeply into Christian stuff and starting campuses and being suspended from my school for handing out Christian literature and via. And sue the school district for violating my civil rights of freedom of religion.
I mean, I was. I was in as an activist and a Bible lover and a Christian evangelist and started campus groups and just got.
[00:26:33] Speaker A: So the. The DNA was there from the beginning. Doug, that's really beautiful hearing just your experience and story. That's why I love that question with our guests so much. Our standard question you've kind of already answered. We usually ask, is it something that you found oppressive or liberating? And you've already mentioned in the words that. The language that we use, that it was liberating. When did you become aware though, that for others the scriptures can be used in a ways? That anti. That story that you were so taken with, that was being played out.
[00:27:13] Speaker C: Right away.
[00:27:16] Speaker A: Right. So almost that conversation you had around the back in those small groups and they gave you the diagram, you were.
[00:27:21] Speaker C: Like, yeah, I mean, I experienced it. I experienced these people telling me how you're supposed to understand something, that at the point I was like, my eyes saw something. And you're now telling me another story like that is.
[00:27:32] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:27:33] Speaker C: Okay. And then I met with these two. Two really great guys who became these disciplers of me through a group called Campus Crusade for Christ. Their high school ministry called Student Venture.
And we met at a Burger King and they took a place, Matt, and turned it over and started sketching out stuff for me. That's kind of their discipleship thing. I kept that thing. Still have it. I put it in a book.
I carried it around with me for 12 years in my wallet.
And when I opened it up after about a dozen years. So by that time I'm out of seminary, I'm a pastor and everything. And I like find this document proof positive that they were re narrating the biblical story in a way that they truly believe they were being faithful to. And I think they weren't. They had no intention to do anything harmful. I think they were trying to prevent a problem that I didn't have.
And they did this one. They had, they drew this train. Have you ever seen this train? That's called the Fact Faith Feeling train.
[00:28:30] Speaker B: I don't know that one.
[00:28:31] Speaker C: What they're trying to, what they're trying to get after is that there's kind of three components to life. I think they're being thoughtful here that like, you have information and the facts of things that are true and then you have faith in things that you know to be true and a faith that's alive and then you have your feelings or your experiences.
So they draw this train where the engine is the facts, the faith is the coal card, and the caboose are the feelings, and they draw a line cutting off the caboose and basically said, hey, look, even if you don't keep feeling the way you do now, this is 10 days after my religious experience at the Jesus People Church. Like, even if you don't keep feeling that your faith can stay alive and the facts of God's word are still true. Okay.
Problem was my whole train was running in reverse.
[00:29:24] Speaker A: That's right, yeah. Yeah.
[00:29:25] Speaker C: The only thing I had was my experiences. And they're basically telling me, you don't need that, let's not start there.
And so it's been so helpful for me to realize that, I don't know, maybe for some people, they never had that positive God, Holy Spirit, refreshing experience that they can lean into. So they had to start with a bunch of information about the word of God and then develop feeling or develop faith in it and then get some kind of an experience.
I just had the reverse process and it taught me that when someone brings a solution to you, that's the opposite of what you need. That can feel oppressive.
Even in the best of best of times.
It's caused me to be very thoughtful about the level of human diversity and experience.
You know, if, if you look at just human diversity, there's ways that we're so much the same, but also ways that we're so diverse and everything in created order is so diverse, but still part of a System. Like. Like diversity is the organizing principle.
Well, why would that not also be true in spirituality? Like, why would. Why would spirituality somehow be uniform when everything else. So anyway, it just made me. Made me be very thoughtful of the biblical narrative and how Jesus is never quoted saying the same thing to any two people.
You know, to one he says, go tell. To the other one he says, don't go tell. To when he says, sell everything you've got to another. What? He says, you must be born again.
And to one he says, stand up. To when he says, sit down. Like it. So it feels like this is a biblical and the. The Jewish texts are very similar.
[00:31:15] Speaker A: You know, that's right.
[00:31:16] Speaker C: Like, so why do we, you know, anyway.
Yeah, but then we get into oppressive times like this, and then I'm like, no, look, I don't want a bunch of Christian nationalists telling me why their law and order narrative makes sense. I'm going to tell them what, what, what saith the Lord.
I feel the impulse to solve this kind of chaos and pain with. With strong. With strong arm. Yeah, you know, and I don't know, you have to follow a crucified, risen Lord and it.
Or I don't know. Or you start swinging swords and hanging yourself. Yeah, that's the. That's the other biblical, at least disciple option, I guess.
[00:32:03] Speaker A: Doug, even in your retelling of what stayed with you from that Passion Play and the Forgive them, Father, they don't know what they're doing. There is that. Which rang true at that scene. And in a moment, I know Drew has another question before we get there. Maybe I'm spoilers ahead, but I heard, I'm not mad at you, bro, and immediately thought of, forgive them, Father. They don't know what they're doing. It's that same spirit that you got caught up in as you watch that passion play at 16.
There is a disarmed kind of force that is for you that invites in and yet they crucify you. And I think that's where the conviction to actually go, that's not true, because it doesn't fit with that is so important in this moment.
[00:33:00] Speaker C: Wow, that's really insightful. I hadn't put those two things together. Yeah, that is exactly it. And then the response from the other person was, I don't know how.
Yeah, a pg. This podcast needs to stay.
But what he says to her is.
He says something. He has to be concerned after he shoots her in the face.
[00:33:23] Speaker A: He says it after. That's the thing. That's like, so right.
How do you kill someone and then say that?
[00:33:30] Speaker C: Yeah, it's just. It's just cruelty. And I will tell you, I just learned from a friend today who went to a Christian college in Indiana, and he said, I just found out. I went to college with that guy.
[00:33:43] Speaker A: Democracy now reported that he self identified as a Christian nationalist extremist. According to his family members, the gospel.
[00:33:52] Speaker C: Story doesn't land on everyone in the same way. Some people end up seeing the temptations as the deal that should have been taken and some of themselves as, Whoa.
[00:34:00] Speaker B: Yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's. So just recently they put, there's a new military ad out.
Blessed are the peacemakers. I don't know if you've seen that, Jared. I don't know. It's made in your way, but.
And so just, I mean, of all texts, right?
[00:34:18] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:34:20] Speaker B: Jesus's teachings on peace to underwrite nationalism, militarism, war, violence, it's just the complete distortion and corruption of everything Jesus stood for and lived for. So.
[00:34:34] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:34:36] Speaker B: So Doug, half me wants to go back and ask you all kinds of questions about your experience, but we're going to keep moving forward.
I really would love for you to help us. So, you know, a lot of people have not had the same experience that you've had with the Bible.
A lot of people come with a lot of trauma.
Some people just think it is a weapon. It is a text that upholds the status quo. It's a dangerous text.
It's more harm than good. Right.
And yet you've been able to encounter it and see it as a liberating force and see the power of the Jesus story for your own life. So I'm really curious what from your own story and experience has shaped your lens for reading the Bible. That might be just a gift for others to consider as they kind of lean into reading the Bible for themselves.
[00:35:36] Speaker C: I remember in the early days of Christian, like the first summer, like that whole experience happened on April 1st, April Fool's Day, 1983.
[00:35:46] Speaker A: Oh, wow.
[00:35:46] Speaker C: You know, I don't know. Just kind of like, clever to me. I love it.
That whole summer I was in a with a bunch of people who cared a lot about the Bible so much. Some of them were from a group called the Navigators, which came out of people in the Navy, and they like to memorize Bible passages. So we got little Bible hacks, little verses, and you'd pull one out and you'd say the reference and then you'd say the passage, and then you'd say the reference again, it was this memorization tool. And that's how they said you were getting the. I went, you hurt.
At this point, I don't know much, right? I barely know anything. But somewhere along the line, I start asking a bunch of questions about the Bible.
They start talking about when it's being put together and when they write it. And so I say to them, so the disciples and the early Christians didn't have the New Testament, right?
I happened to ask the wrong group of people because they were dispensationalists. So they were like, yeah, that's right, that's right. And they really made a big deal out of this. Like, instead they had the presence of the Holy Spirit who guided them.
The Bible came. Then the Holy Spirit was removed in a way because now we have the text instead. Like it was some sort of a placeholder. I don't know, whatever, right? But what landed on me there was, I love the Bible, but it's not necessary.
Then I run across this passage in Timothy 1st Timothy 3, 16.
All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for correction, for teaching, and for training in righteousness. Like, it's good for you. You know what? It doesn't say necessary.
And that passage is not referring to the New Testament. It's only referring to what we call the Jewish Scriptures, maybe even the Pentateuch only.
So the Bible matters so much to me.
And then I started to realize, well, there's a bunch of people who can't read or they can't. The Bible doesn't exist in their language or their deaf or, I don't know. Tommy from the who.
Rock opera is deaf, dumb and blind kid. Like, but it's great if you want it to be great. It's a hindrance when it's a hindrance. But what it is not is necessary.
And so if it's become oppressive or if parts of it are oppressive, I just think the agency we have is that we don't follow Father, Son and Holy Scriptures.
They're profitable, they're good, they're useful until they're not.
You know, I have cases and crates full of old adapters and cables and cords and stuff that, you know, one point were so necessary. It was produced and shipped with something, or I bought it.
Now it just sits there and it's not useful for anything. I. I don't need to fetishize my old cables and come up with some adapter that I need. And the Bible doesn't need to be treated like that. So I say to people for whom it's not useful.
Feel free.
Feel free. And if your only version of Jesus following has to come through Scripture, there's a way to be free from that, too.
And so I don't know, there's a lot of other ways that people used to just tell stories to each other and whisper stories and talk about rumors of what could be and the possibilities.
And that's the community that ended up canonizing the Bible and putting it together.
So I don't know if that helps or not, but that's my view of it and because I really like it and love it and written a bunch of books about it and everything and find so solace in it and memorized little sections of it and. But, you know, it's.
[00:39:35] Speaker A: Look, if.
[00:39:36] Speaker C: If Jesus can say about the Sabbath, the Sabbath was made to benefit humanity. Humans were not made to uphold the Sabbath. And to the Jewish community, the Sabbath was God's singular promise that came from the very character of God. As God rested, so shall you rest. And it is an everlasting covenant marked by the Sabbath. You know, marked by the Sabbath. If Jesus can say, yeah, give or take the Sabbath, you can certainly say, give or take a passage or a book or the collection or Christian story is not around a God who is finicky about stuff like that.
[00:40:15] Speaker A: Yeah, that's great.
And for those of us who have been formed in such a way that we know what verse 17 is in terms of 2 Timothy 3, 17, so that every servant of God may be fully equipped for every good work, and even in terms of 16 that useful for training injustice or righteousness as the commentary that you read, we would love now to return to that beautiful benediction that has been such an important part of formation of communities that you've led and this moment in Minneapolis and what it means and if you could connect for us, what is it for us to train injustice that we might be equipped for every good work in this moment? Instead of the ways that the scriptures are being bastardized and used for propaganda, we have people jumping out of helicopters with machine guns with Blessed are the peacemakers written over the top.
How can we instead allow this to actually form us and correct and encourage us in ways that we get caught up in that beautiful play that you watched when you were 16 years old and find ourselves on the side of the crucified instead of the crucifiers?
[00:41:38] Speaker C: You know, the American story is just riddled with times where we have tried to convince one another of the myth of redemptive violence.
We simultaneously say, in this country, it's God who protects us.
And then we brag about spending a trillion dollars on a military designed with the most lethal weapons in human hands.
So we don't know how to separate our notion of the divine and what's really protecting us.
So we've been blessing the violators for a long time. But before I got into Christianity, the song that I knew, I knew a few of them, but it came from a movie called Billy Jack. I don't know if either. You saw Billy Jack?
[00:42:29] Speaker A: That's what it's called.
[00:42:30] Speaker C: Anyway, there's a song called the One Tin Soldier and it's a very hippie kind of funky song and it's about the metaphor of American soldiers going into Vietnam. And it tells a story about a village on a mountain that has a treasure buried deep beneath the sand and the people in the valley who want it and they attack it. And. And the chorus is, go ahead and hate your neighbor. You can go ahead and cheat a friend, you can do it in the name of heaven and justify it in the end. But there won't be any trumpets blowing come the judgment day on the bloody morning after the one tin soldier rides away the 110 soldiers. The military. When the military is over, there's going to be no glory, it's going to be no benefit on the judge anyway.
Wow, that's been so deep. I mean it's so deep in me that like wanting this non violent story and to condemn violence with love that I just can't think of the Christian story without it. So when I hear people doing all the other. I'm just.
[00:43:31] Speaker B: It.
[00:43:31] Speaker C: It is so.
I just can't.
I was never in that world. I never thought the military. I mean, as a Christian, I couldn't. I decided when I became a Christian, I can't even take the pledge of Allegiance. Yeah, I don't know how you could. So anyway, I.
And that was. That was even before I got all liberal wokey.
Okay, well, this passage says to the one who is able to keep you from stumbling or falling and to present you before the Holy One's glorious presence without fault and with great joy.
Look, the idea of a stumble and a fall and not making it that I just love that. I love how we know what it means to stumble, we know what it means to fall, we know what it means and then we know what it means to be presented without fault.
Like there's an alternative to. You don't have to worry about failure.
Failure is not the point.
I mean my whole theological project has been sin is not A big deal to God.
Violating one another is what we should keep from doing. If you're worried about somehow, you know, God's feelings don't get hurt.
You never have to fear anyway, so that you get presented before the glorious presence without fault and with great joy.
So it feels to me like this is some doxology that's saying, look, you're gonna run, you're gonna effort, you're gonna try.
And the stumbling's not the point, the failure's not the point.
May you still be lifted up.
I heard this, this. This. This story about. I don't know, it's kind of a Christian short little Christian tale or something, and it's said about a Scottish person, so it uses a little Scottish accent. So I apologize for anybody who's offended by my bad Scottish accent or using one, but I think it works in the.
And he said the story is that Angus lives his whole life and cares for his wife and cares for his family and cares for his community and works his whole life. And when he dies, he stands before the Lord. And Lord says, hello, Angus. And Angus says, whoa, Hi, Lord. Good to see you. I've done the best I could.
The Lord says, ah, no, you didn't, son, but you done good. And I'm glad you're home.
That I did the best I could.
No, you didn't, but you done good, and I'm glad you're home.
Like, I feel like what we're up to is walking each other home.
It's not perfection, it's goodness. And we know what not goodness is.
Actually, I can do a whole thing if you wanted on the book of Genesis and where it says, and it was good, and it was good, and it was good, and it was good. Because that was the alternative in the early Mesopotamian culture to perfection.
The early ones, Tamian things said that the gods were unpleased because humans weren't perfect. And anyway, goodness we know, and the fact that Rene's last name is good and she was met with violence is just poetic beauty.
There's a thankfulness. So anyway, I think you know that that's what it's about. And then it's. Then it goes on. I'll finish quickly here. But to the only God, our Savior, be glory and majesty, power and authority.
Like, there is something where a peasant people were saying, we don't have to fight for glory and majesty, power and authority, that it belongs to the divine.
I understand the divine to include all of humanity, and we share all of that together. So when one person tries to take it. It's coveting, stealing power and glory and majesty and authority, and it's disgusting. And it's never going to last.
You know every dictator, you know every strong man, you know every. Build it in my name, put my name on it.
They're all gone.
And all of these are going to be too.
Humanity is going to outlast all of the hatred and all of the authority and all of the power.
It's foolishness.
In other words, it belongs to the divine or belongs to God through all ages now and forevermore. And that part I have totally loved for so long, that what was, what is, and what will be is all a part of the same. It's what we call eternity. You know, it's. It's endlessness.
And I don't know, I think if we can get beyond faults and we can move into something where we don't have to perform and something where we're not into power struggles and something. We're into recognizing that. I heard. I heard Tony Campolo, and I think, Jared, I met you in a room one time with Tony.
[00:48:18] Speaker A: That's. With Tony.
[00:48:19] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, I know you. Is because of him. And I heard him say one time where someone was like, tony, I just. Like, you're being a little unclear, but what are your views on the divinity of Jesus? And he said something like, hey, I'm not one who's going to challenge the divinity of anyone, you know? And it was this whimsical gray.
I was like, oh, man, that is.
That is beautiful.
Right? It's a. It's like if you can't. If you're going to obsess about the divinity of Jesus before you decide to reconcile your view of divinity of one another, I think you have a little bit of back work to do before you should start talking about how is Jesus different from the rest of us?
Because. Because that's the point, right? You're supposed to love God and neighbor as yourself. Like, Jesus does this whole thing. I'm in you and the Father and I'm in you. Like there. There's a whole. The whole deal there that I just feel like is. Is the story that. That we're up to. And so anyway, that passage just feels human. It feels like it gets us and it feels like it's an alternative to a really brutal story of perfection and that, look, we have to walk each other home and we don't do it well. And that's. That's what we're called to. Like, may we be.
Yeah, okay.
Yeah, Massively too long. Sermon complete.
[00:49:43] Speaker B: No, this is good. This. And I love. And it's hitting me even as you were like saying, like just in the moment, like, this is not a.
It would. I guess you could say anything because if. If the Sermon on the Mount is being twisted, then I guess you could say it could be twisted.
But. But when you hear it, it's not a triumphalist Right.
Blessing at all. It is.
It's sustaining and holding and keeping and persevering in the midst of hardship.
It's a bottom up, not a top down blessing. Right. As we're making our way back home. It is that vision that I think is an encouragement, I think, for folks even right now, with all that people are going through. I think, like, this is.
This is a good blessing for folks right now. Yeah.
[00:50:37] Speaker A: Even for someone like me, Doug, who has like a nosebleed high Christology that is only matched with like a ocean's deep anthropology, that if you can't.
If you can't see that God revealed fully, imagine that peace. Nick from Nazareth.
[00:51:00] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:51:01] Speaker A: You won't be able to see it in your neighbor, let alone the stranger. And we can't even mention our enemies if you can't see it in yourself. And I think the beauty of what you're saying in the encouragement, it will be like texting with friends that are in Minneapolis. And I want to be careful because I know things are so. People are really vulnerable.
And yet people.
You have known this dynamic where people are like, am I doing enough? Is what I'm doing heroic? And it gets pulled into these narratives in larger culture, almost superhero narratives. Instead of what your encouragement is, do the good, that meal that you're making, that bed that you've provided in your basement, the homework help that you're doing.
So those kids who can't be in school at the moment because they might be picked up by ice, it's that kind of wholesome good.
Like you've done good.
That's a word, like for people to do the necessary good that they would want somebody to do if they're in the same situation. Forget the heroic, forget the perfect. Like that stuff is a complete distraction from the necessary good that we need to be caught up with. And there's our vision of holiness. It is not something found in ourself, but something that's in loan as we join in solidarity from our neighbor. It's gorgeous. The other thing that came up for me, Doug, as you were sharing with us, the doxology is one of the most Phenomenal sermons. And I know I've told Drew about this before, one of the most phenomenal sermons I've ever heard in person. And it was Reverend Doctor Otis Moss Jr. Otis Moss III's father. And he said he was going to preach on Psalm 23. The Lord is my shepherd. And most people know that. And he. He started the reading and he said, the Lord is.
And he said, unfortunately, we do not have time for the rest of the reading.
Let me start. And already people were like, on their feet, standing up, like, this is incredible. The whole sermon is, the Lord is. And he went through his close was, Stalin was, but the Lord is.
[00:53:25] Speaker C: Is.
[00:53:26] Speaker A: Mussolini was, but the Lord is. Franco was, but the Lord is. Donald Trump was, but the Lord is. And there was not a person in there that wasn't on their feet or falling out or like, worship just enveloped the whole. Like, it was not merely a masterclass on preaching, but hearing.
Hearing the good that we're called to and how any doxology pushes back any powers that claim the position of the Lord who is.
Doug, that's a phenomenal word.
[00:54:06] Speaker C: You think about all these.
In our work, we work with a lot of different people. I want to talk about what we do because it's not very interesting to me right now, but it's good work.
But I was talking with the person who runs the American Atheist association, and we're going to do. Do partnership work together and all this stuff. And so I know there's a lot of people who don't have available to them a construct of the divine that becomes what I would conjure when I think of.
But there are many versions of what people. What is the Lord?
You know, before we started, I think. I don't think we recorded this part, but I think, Jared, you said something about when you were praying, like the.
The nameless or the unnamable or something.
Are you comfortable sharing that now, whatever that was?
[00:54:54] Speaker A: Yeah, sure. I was quoting the Psalms. From the rising of the sun to the going down of the same. May the unspeakable name of the Lord be praised.
[00:55:02] Speaker C: The unspeakable name.
We spend so much time defining it. So, like, I don't know, wherever people find the sense of.
There's just a lot. Human beings in our, you know, hundreds of millions of years of communicating have had lots of versions of it, and we sometimes get a little fussy about it. But in all of that thing that gets me about the biblical narrative that I like so much is it has this human component of it where people are saying how long, O Divine, O Lord, O Holy One, O Unspeakable One, Will the unrighteous continue to lead?
You know, you can't read the Psalms and the. You get.
[00:55:44] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:55:45] Speaker C: You can't get through life without feeling like, how long are these sobs going to be the ones that are continuing to oppress all of us? You know, so you have these two things, right? The Lord is and these people was and weres. And how long until like, that is.
That's it. That, that.
That's the thing we hold to.
And then let's pray. Oh Lord, we don't become the very oppressors, you know, it's because that, because this is a grand dilemma, a predicament. It's not a simple problem.
We're going to have many responses to how human beings organize ourselves. It's not problem solution. If it was, well, that would be fine. We would just find the solution. You know, we'd be done with a place. It. It's more beautiful than that.
[00:56:35] Speaker A: Doug.
There's this moment, and it's a paradigm, and it opens up almost like a parable so many other moments.
As we come to a close. We'd love to give you an opportunity to speak a little to your work that goes beyond this moment, but actually supports this moment. I love how you connected your city and the realities of the murder of George Floyd and Renee Goode and that these aren't separate moments, but the same.
And your work almost sits in the connection between, well, words of Leonard Cohen, democracy is coming to the usa.
Would you help us understand your work and how it connects your years and years of pastoring to neighbors from all different backgrounds to see democracy come to the usa?
[00:57:30] Speaker C: Yeah, we. We work in the area of religious and political identity. And so specifically, we work to help voters who feel they have a religious identity that came with a side dish of a political identity and they just keep a package deal and they want to swap one of those out, you know, and they don't know. They didn't know that they could.
So for many of those people, the people were most working with and care about are people for whom they're Jesus. Following came with a side dish of being a Republican.
They want to keep their faith and they want to not feel hardwired into that political party.
We take that very seriously. For some people, it's not a problem, but for millions of Americans, it is a really hard thing.
And so we work in those areas. We work to help people shift and we beg them to make the common good their voting identity and their voting criteria, and they can apply that to political parties as they need to. So it's change behavior. It's. It's conversion therapy. You know, work in the best sense of the word. That we're trying to help people use therapeutic understandings to convert, not to convert people away from being a gay person.
We use it to.
[00:58:51] Speaker A: Oh, sure, help.
[00:58:53] Speaker C: Yeah. We use it to help people know that there's. Our work is to help people know that there's another community that they can be a part of. Because, look, most of us would rather be wrong and together than right and alone.
So if you. If you're living in most parts of America or in most relationships or going to most churches and you give up on a Republican identity, that can cost you a lot of.
There was a woman who came to one of our events in Michigan. She drove 100 miles. She was in her 60s. It was nighttime. She says, really big deal for me to be here. And I said, well, why would you come so far? And she said, well, in my little town, if anyone finds out, no one can find out that I'm not voting for Donald Trump and I'm going to vote for Joe Biden at the time.
And I said, well, why is that? And she goes, oh, I own the hardware store.
[00:59:48] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:59:48] Speaker C: Another woman said something similar, and she said, oh, because I play bridge with the girls on Thursdays.
Like, you will be cut out of your social. Of your social group. Your store will go under you. You will be alone in your community. You know, and so this stuff is in people really deeply. So we do a lot of work around that. And we also help the Democratic Party know that they can reach out to faith voters without giving up their Democratic identity. So we're a matchmaking group. We're like a dating service between religious voters, of whom there are millions and millions and millions, especially in key flip districts and states that should meet Democrats and consider voting for them, even if they don't have to become one.
So that's the kind of work we do. And then we work on Christian nationalism, because that sits at the root of it. We work around issues of immigration.
We try to help people build a philosophy of common good that then their political life can fit into, rather than their political life trying to fit the common good into a political structure. Because no political party is designed to be. To match every person and to solve every issue. And to be perfect, they can't. Your political identity needs to be part of a larger sense of how you view the world and civic Life and so on.
[01:01:05] Speaker A: So.
[01:01:05] Speaker C: But that's what we do.
That's our work. And we travel around and we do fun stuff and we run events and we do cross country bike rides and 150 mile walks with faith leaders and we do protesting activities and we do constructive work and we run podcasts and video streams and stuff.
[01:01:27] Speaker A: Good on you, Doug.
[01:01:29] Speaker B: Yep. I've had the opportunity of connecting with Doug as he's come through with Vote Common Good and Central PA both. What was like maybe Hershey was first or something like that around that.
[01:01:38] Speaker C: Yeah, we're not done. We're not done with you.
[01:01:40] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, we've got a lot of work to do in Central pa, so. Yeah, it's.
[01:01:45] Speaker C: Hey, can I tell you one story about what happened in central Pennsylvania? In Humboldt, Humboldtville, Humble.
[01:01:51] Speaker B: Humblesville, Hummelstown.
[01:01:52] Speaker C: Humblestown. Thank you, Humblestown. We were doing an event. Sometimes we do event for like a congressional candidate. We'll also be in town for like a week or something. So we'll do things with people running for state races.
So we're talking to this person, she's running for the state assembly in. In the Commonwealth Pennsylvania. And we're talking about doing these events. And we come in, we have these. We had at the time, we had two buses. And so we had these buses that say faith, Hope and love Supporting democracy for all. And we use those as a backdrop. We travel with chairs and we send them out and we run political events for religious people. So they're part revival and part.
Part political revival and part Faith Open Love revival.
And so we're doing these events like the one Drew that you spoke at in Harrisburg and maybe in Hershey. And we said to the campaign, like, hey, do you have a place in mind that you think would work well for the Sunday afternoon rally we're gonna do? And they said, well, there's this restaurant that kind of sits at this great location and it's closed, so that parking lot would work out great. And we said, fabulous. And they said, fabulous.
So we pull in, set up our event. We're got the buses there, the chairs are set up, there's a bunch of people around. And this pickup truck comes driving in with a sense of authority, Parks. This guy gets out, he's clearly agitated and heated. He's looking around, I see him, he makes eye contact. I walk him. I said, hey, welcome. And he goes, what the hell are you doing? And I said, oh, we're running this event for this person. She's running for the state assembly. And he goes, well, this is my restaurant. What are you doing here?
And at that moment, I realized we thought the campaign was going to call to ask permission. They thought we were going to call. Nobody asked permission.
Oh, wow. So the guy, he's looking at everything. He sees these signs. He sees the Kamala Harris sign. He sees the candidate, the Democratic, and he goes, look, I'm a conservative evangelical, gun toting Trump supporting Christian.
Get out of here.
And I'm like, dude, I am so sorry.
We will start packing up. This is totally my fault. We should have called to ask permission.
And he's like. So then he's kind of just spinning a little bit, and he's like, okay, so tell me again what's happening. I said, well, he said, is the person running for office here? I said, yeah, she's over there. And he goes, well, can I meet her? So he goes over and he meets her. She's a gay woman.
He goes over and meets her, talks. He comes back, he goes, okay, all right. I'm settling down here a little bit. I can see you guys are all set up. She's very nice. Just do your meeting and then get out of here as fast as you can.
And I said, and I'm thinking to myself, if I owned a restaurant and a bunch of red hats pulled up and pulled up their buses with their stuff on it, would I let them go?
Not a chance. So I've instantly met a good Samaritan.
So then he gets on his. His tractor, and he's got all this acreage, and he goes and he mows the lawn on his little John Deere tractor. And when the thing is done, we're packing up, and I walked out to him and I had two beers in my hand and a hundred dollars, and I said, could we rent your place for $100? Said, that would be fair. I said, and I have two beers. You're welcome to both of them. Or if you'd be willing to have one with me, I'd love to say thank you for letting us be here. He said, yeah, let's go over by your bus. And so we go over. It turns out we're about the same age.
He told me that everything he owns was in the tractor trailer behind him. And on Tuesday, two days later, they're moving to South Carolina because he had to get out of Pennsylvania because he couldn't live under that governor any longer.
New Democratic governor.
And then he said, but, you know, when I was in church this morning, my heart was just broken because I remembered that our church used to be a place where people of political difference could be together. And then I looked around, and I thought, everybody in here votes like me.
And then I pull up and you guys are here.
And then I get on my tractor for an hour, and I'm out there thinking, I thought our faith was supposed to be bigger than our politics.
Then you came up with these two beers.
So we start chatting. And then I said, well, how was it owning the restaurant? I said, Covid was tough. And I said, my wife and I have thought about owning a place like this because there's also a music venue, and my wife's a yoga instructor. And I said, you know, we've thought about having a. He goes, you should buy my place. Why don't you buy my place? I haven't sold it yet. Like. And we hit it off, and we end in a hug and wishing each other well. And he goes, you know, I hope she loses, but I hope you guys are safe and have a great. A great day.
And I thought, that's really beautiful.
[01:06:14] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:06:15] Speaker C: And I also thought about all the times we're in the progressive circles. I run in, you say the wrong word, you hold the wrong position, and you're out.
And I just gotta tell you, time and time and time again, traveling this country from walks and bike rides and driving in every state on continental United States for our events, we have been treated so well by people who absolutely disagree with us politically and absolutely support people who are supporting the nonsense that's going on. And it's confusing to realize that sometimes you're loving your enemy because you want to pat yourself on the back, and sometimes it's because they're actually quite lovable, kind, and they're wise.
So, anyway, it was a transformative experience, I think, just down the road from where we've done so many things, and, yeah, that part of the world.
[01:07:09] Speaker A: That's beautiful, Doug.
[01:07:10] Speaker C: Yep.
[01:07:10] Speaker B: That's good.
[01:07:11] Speaker C: So that's our work. That's that. That's what we do.
[01:07:13] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:07:13] Speaker C: If I could sort of explain it in a story, It's.
It's that.
[01:07:19] Speaker A: Yeah, that's.
That's wonderful, mate.
[01:07:23] Speaker C: I'm thankful for you and to both of you. You mean a lot to me, both of you, so thank you for having me.
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