Rita Nakashima Brock and the Role of Church in Troubled Times

Episode Transcript
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>> Paul (00:07):
Welcome to the Future Christian Podcast, your
source for insights and ideas on how to lead your church in
the 21st century. At the Future Christian
Podcast, we talk to pastors, authors,
and other faith leaders for helpful advice and practical
wisdom to help you and your community of faith
walk boldly into the future. Whether

(00:27):
you're a pastor, church leader, or a passionate member
of your faith community, this podcast is
designed to challenge, inspire, and equip
you with the tools you need for impactful ministry.
And now for a little bit about the guest for this episode.

>> Martha Tatarnic (00:43):
Welcome to the Future Christian Podcast. Today,
Loren Richmond Jr. Welcomes Dr. Rita
Nakashima Brock. Dr. Brock is a
renowned theologian, author, and national
expert on moral injury, currently serving
as Senior Vice President for Moral Injury
Recovery Programs at Volunteers of

(01:04):
America. In this role, she leads
efforts to advance understanding and
healing for individuals and communities
affected by moral injury, particularly
veterans. She was the founding director of
the Soul Repair center at Bright Divinity
School at Texas Christian University,
where she also served as research professor

(01:26):
of theology and culture. A
prolific scholar and speaker, Dr.
Brock is the co author of Soul
Recovering from Moral Injury After War
and Proverbs of Ashes,
Violence, Redemptive Suffering, and the Search for
what Saves Us. She has provided
training for VA mental health professionals,

(01:49):
chaplains, and veteran families.
A reminder. Before we start today's conversation,
please take a moment to subscribe to the podcast,
leave a review and share Future Christian with
a friend. Connect with Loren, Martha and
Future Christian on Instagram. Shoot us
an email at laurensonate, uh,

(02:09):
mediapro.com with comments,
questions or ideas for future episodes.
We appreciate your voice in how we
faithfully discern the future of the church.

>> Loren (02:31):
All right. Welcome to the Future Christian Podcast. My name is Loren
Richmond Jr. And I'm actually recording live
and in person at the Remind and Renew conference
here at Phillips Seminary in Tulsa,
Oklahoma. I'm pleased to be joined in
person by Dr. Rita
Nakashima. Barack. So thank you so much for being here. Thank
you so much for your time and, uh, wisdom you're

(02:53):
sharing at this conference. Take a moment to share
anything you'd like our listeners to know about you.

>> Rita Nakashima Brock (02:59):
Oh, thank you for having me. I'm looking forward to the
conversation. Um,
I should say that, um, my degree is in
theology, philosophy, religion and theology.
Um, and, um, I've been
interested in, um, the
progressive end of Christian theology and, and
movements for social change for all of my adult life.

(03:21):
I started college in the civil rights
movement.

>> Loren (03:25):
Yeah, right. Uh, what is,
uh. Share a little bit, if you're
willing, more about your kind of faith Background and journey,
what that looked like in the past and what that looks like today.

Okay. Uh, um, I was born in
Fukuoka, Japan, uh, to
a Puerto Rican birth father that I didn't know I had or meet till
I was 33. So I was raised for the first
five years of my life in my
grandparents home with my mother. And uh, my
grandfather was a Buddhist priest. So I was raised a
Buddhist in Japan for five years.

(03:58):
Uh, and then I transitioned for a year in Okinawa
at a military basis. My stepfather by that time
had married my mother and he was in the US Army.
So uh, I landed in Fort Riley, Kansas at the
age of six and transitioned to
military life. Uh, grew up military
dependent so I went to military
schools and to chapel, Protestant

(04:21):
services. My stepfather was from Amory,
Mississippi so he was a Southern
Protestant. And so we went to Protestant
services. Uh, and in the
military um, chaplains are
not allowed to proselytize. So I was
never asked about baptism or anything and, but I
did attend Sunday school and I remember

(04:44):
in about fifth grade or
so the teacher said something about we should read the Bible cover
to cover. So I did.

>> Loren (04:51):
Wow.

And uh, a lot of it didn't make any sense to
me. Um, but all the things I was being told about
Jesus as this kind and
nice Savior did not comport with
the confrontational, argument, argumentative
person I saw in the New Testament. And as a
Japanese person that kind of behavior is very
antisocial. So I didn't really understand

(05:13):
Christianity exactly. I knew what it
was saying and claiming but it didn't
interest me actually that much. I did do
particip youth things and stuff with the chapel
programs because that was expected. And I
think I even learned to sound like a Christian. But it wasn't clear
to me what um, exactly what that

(05:33):
meant. And I really did
not want to align myself
with anything that would prohibit me from
being reunited with my Japanese grandparents.
And all those years I was
subjected to racism because it was in the 50s, after
World War II. And so I kept wanting

(05:54):
to go home and for me home was Japan.
But I didn't speak the language anymore. And I remember
as a kid wanting my mother to reteach me
Japanese and she was always too busy, she wouldn't do
it. And I didn't realize until much later that the
reason she didn't do it I think had to do with my
birth father and all kinds of things she didn't want me to know.

(06:15):
So I grew up in the US military, uh, but
when I was 16 my father went to Vietnam for
two years, um, on two
tours. And, uh, I had a friend in high
school whose father was a Baptist
minister. And so she invited me to church one day. And this was a
fundamentalist conservative Baptist church. And I believed

(06:35):
in evolution and other things like that.
Uh, but her father was just a
good minister.

>> Speaker E (06:41):
Yeah.

And so he actually, I think
sort of took. Took over helping my
family because my dad was gone for two years. So I sort
of was semi adopted into, you know, like whenever they would take
trips, my friend would invite me to go with them. So I
was going to the beach and surfing in the
summertime and doing a lot of fun stuff with
his family and attending

(07:05):
his church. And
uh, at some point in that process,
pretty early, I realized that,
um, to be sort of fully
inside that circle of care that he had, I should
join the church. So I asked him to baptize me.
And I, when he asked me if I believed that Jesus Christ was my
personal Lord and savior, I said yes, even though I had no idea what that

(07:26):
meant. Um, I mean, I did, but
I didn't believe it in the sense of me going to heaven and my
grandparents going to hell. And
so. But that, but really the reason I
got baptized was so I could be a full fledged member of his church.
In particular because he was such a great minister.
Um, and he knew I believed in evolution and he baptized

(07:47):
me anyway. Or a fundamentalist that was kind of
made. But he was like that. He was in trouble with
some of the other ministers in his conservative
denomination because he allowed Alcoholics
Anonymous to use the church for meetings. And they were
really upset. They disagreed with that because
you need to require people to be saved first before they can use
the church. And his reply was, well, until they get sober,

(08:10):
they can't get saved. So this, you know, so he had,
he was just very compassionate and
sensible that way. And he was a really good minister
to me and my family. So I got baptized
a Baptist. But when I went to
college, uh, I didn't. I stopped going to
church because I tried one Baptist church in the town of
Orange and it freaked me out. It was so weird.

>> Loren (08:32):
Yeah.

Um, so I stopped going to church. But, uh, I
went to Chapman now university. It was Chapman
College at the time, which is related to the Disciples, which
is Phillips Seminary denomination also. And
I, uh, got him. I was
actually pre med. I
had high grades in math and science. I was going to be a brain

(08:53):
surgeon. That was my goal, was to become a surgeon of
some kind. And, um, but the civil
rights movement broke out. My first Semester in
college in a really dramatic way
on campus. And it was really clear you had
to step up. And so I got
immediately involved in activist civil
rights work because it made a big difference. And,

(09:15):
um, so that, uh,
made my science classes seem really boring.

>> Loren (09:21):
Mhm.

Um, I just lost interest in the
science and math and I got more interested in the civil
rights movement. I was close. I had a scholarship from the state
of California for tuition for four years. And I was
close to losing it because I was so bored of my science classes. And
I asked some of the student leaders in the civil rights
movement what I could take that was interesting.

(09:42):
And I thought they might send me to political science or
something. No, they sent me to all of them
that I asked. Uh, three people I asked. They were all juniors
and seniors. Um, and I said, what can I take? And
they said, take Willis Fisher's Old Testament class. It'll be the hardest
and best class you take in college.

>> Loren (09:59):
Oh, interesting.

And I'm like, why Bible? That's
so weird, right? And I couldn't figure
that one out, especially as a Baptist who
elapsed Baptist, as it were.
Um, but I, you know, three people said it. So I signed
up for it the first semester of my sophomore year
and it was the best class I

(10:20):
had in college. It was the hardest. I mean, I,
um. It was taught by a professor
who had retired from Claremont Seminary in Old
Testament and was in his retirement teaching at
this undergraduate college. And he
was a really wonderful professor.
He. His lectures were

(10:40):
compelling and dazzling, not in a kind of
charismatic way, but just because you were just
riveted by what he was saying. Um,
and then to find out that the Bible wasn't literally true,
that there are all these different historical things and
all of this stuff you study when you actually dig
into the Bible, an original language and,

(11:01):
you know, all of that and the history and the archeology in it and
all that. And I was fascinated.
So I took every class he taught. And by the
end of my sophomore year, I had, I had taken everything.
And he called me into his office and he. And he
said to me at the end of my sophomore year, what are you
majoring in? And I said, well, I'm in pre

(11:22):
med, but I don't really like my science classes. And he said,
well, have you thought about
religion as a major? I said, no. And he said,
well, you know, you made A's in all your classes with me. And
I said, yeah, I'm interested. He said, well, you could keep doing
that. And he talked me into a Religion
major. And so I. Then, of course,
I made. I did fine grade wise. Um,

(11:45):
but when I'd taken everything he
taught, I was bereft because
what was I going to. You know. So I actually took
another independent study with him at one point to learn
biblical Hebrew.

>> Speaker E (11:57):
Wow.

So I did my undergraduate work in. Mostly in Bible, but
also the, uh, you know, to do the major, I had to do all these
courses, but I also took biblical Hebrew on
the side just because that was a way to
stay. I could go in and talk to him about stuff.

>> Speaker E (12:12):
Yeah.

So that's how I wound up in religion. And because I was
in a religion major, the chaplain's office,
which was disciple run, uh, invited to be
part of a student group called the Chaplain's Council. So it was all
the religion majors. So I got involved with
that. And that's how I found out about the denomination that didn't
have creeds and thought you should read the Bible for yourself. I thought

(12:33):
I could deal with that, you know. So I wound up a
disciple that way. So then I got a job my
junior year teaching Sunday school to junior high kids.
M. Um. Or no, my scene. My senior year. It was my senior year
because I only got to do a semester. And then I went on world camp as a
float. But, um, but I discovered I
loved teaching. I. I was really good with junior
high kids and Bible right there. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

(12:55):
No, in fact, when I went on the ship, they got me a gift box
of things to take. I mean, it was. I really love that.
So, um. But somewhere in the end
of my junior year, the same professor
called. His name was Willis Fisher. We all called him Dr.
Fisher. Nobody. We were a little reticent to call
him Willis. He preferred Willis. He called

(13:15):
me in and said, what are you.
Have you thought about graduate school? And
I said, no. And he said, well,
you really can't do a huge amount with an
undergraduate religion major. But if you went and did a master's
degree, you could write curriculum for churches or
you could become a minister. I said, no, I'm not becoming a minister. So
he had all these other options if I got a master's

(13:38):
degree. And I said, well, I guess I would think about it. He
said, well, if you do decide you want to go,
we have a grant arrangement with the
Lane foundation where we can
recommend you for a tuition, uh,
scholarship if you go to a master's degree.
So I finally decided that I didn't have any other
better plans with a religion major. And

(14:00):
so I wound up with a tuition Scholarship to Claremont, to
any seminary. And I picked Claremont because all
the, all those straight A students went there.
And I went there, um, and
continued to find religion fascinating. And I did a
master's, um, and I was
pretty clear ministry was not my calling. So

(14:21):
I didn't do a masters, um, of
divinity. I did a master's in religion
in preparation for. By then I was pretty sure I wanted to
teach it and be a professor. So that's.
Anyway, that's how I wound up getting a doctorate in
theology. And I thought it was going to be Bible
because he was a biblical studies
professor. But in between

(14:42):
college and that master's degree in
seminary, the feminist movement
exploded and Ms. Magazine published its first edition
that summer and all this stuff. And so
by the time I was in graduate school for my master's,
the Bible seemed so damned patriarchal
that I did not want to spend my time studying it.
I wanted to do theology because M. Rosemary Ruther, Mary

(15:05):
Daly, these feminists were putting this stuff out there and it was
like, oh, yeah, that's what I want to do. Um,
so my sort of civil rights activist
energies then flipped over into feminist work
and religion. Um, I didn't lose the civil rights
and anti racism piece, but I added,
uh, both the uh, feminist movement and the first Earth

(15:26):
Day happened while I was in college.
So environmental issues, feminist, it just sort of piled
on to a whole bunch of other things. So that's how I
wound up in religion at all.
Um, and um, it took me a long
time after I got my doctorate to find
a tenure track position because feminists
and women of color were like, not

(15:48):
popular. And so I went
from ah, like sabbatical
replacement to one year appointments for a
long time in my career. So the first, this
is odd, but the first and
last job I held as a professor
was, uh, an endowed chair.

(16:08):
I got an endowed chair a year after I finished my
doctorate and that's where I got tenure. And
I did that for seven years. And then I was tired of teaching, so
I quit and I became an administrator for
a while and then a sort of independent activist. And
then I just. And part of that was anti war because of the
Vietnam thing. Um, and in that

(16:29):
process I discovered this concept, moral injury,
which is now just, I'm obsessed with it.
Right. Um, so that, that's how I got here,
uh, um, to where I am now at Volunteers of
America, running moral injury programming.
And I've been doing that for seven years. And I did five years at
Bright Divinity School doing that also. So I've been
doing. Working in the moral injury space for almost 15

(16:52):
years.

>> Speaker E (16:52):
Yeah.

>> Loren (16:53):
So I imagine a lot of our, uh, listeners will be familiar with
you from the topic of moral injury. I remember, uh, reading
your book when I was in seminary here. You
know, moral Injury. And what was the title?

Soul Repair.

>> Loren (17:05):
Soul repair, that's right. I should remember. I remember the COVID Right,
right. With the.

Oh, isn't that a beautiful cover? I love the COVID of that book. Yeah,
yeah, yeah.

>> Loren (17:13):
Usually I have them right in front of me, but because of circumstances
I don't. So here we are, we're
recording at Phillips Seminary for the Reminder Renew
conference. And the theme of this conference is Seeking wisdom
and understanding in Troubling Times.

Yeah.

>> Loren (17:26):
And I'm hoping we can mix into this
conversation your broader work and
moral injury.
But let's begin with this.
Let's just start. Let's just start talking about
these troubling times.
I've read this in a couple different
sources of late. This term polycrisis.

(17:49):
Are you familiar with the term M? Do you want to define it for our
listeners?

Well, it's just where these massive things accumulate
and they're all happening simultaneously and they seem
overwhelming. That's how I would understand it.
I think the biggest overwhelming one is
climate change. It's so big that people try to ignore it.

>> Speaker E (18:07):
Yeah.

Uh, there's that there is a hot war in
Europe. Uh, there's Israel and
they supposedly have an accord now, but.

>> Loren (18:16):
Right.

But Palestine is gone. I
mean, now they have an accord now that they've just. It's been
destroyed. Right. So there's, there
are wars going on. Um, and a hot war
in Europe is very concerning. Right, right. Um,
we have nuclear weapons, um,
and then we have, from my perspective,
an incompetent government coming in. That

(18:39):
is,
ah, when your
commander in chief is a convicted sexual assaulter
and an adulterer and a bad financial
manager and he wants to put in the
head of the Department of Defense, somebody worse than that
who's also an alcoholic. I
mean, they're very serious. Similar

(19:00):
in that regard to who's never
run an organization bigger than a hundred employees
running the Department of Defense. M.
This is just a whole. That's another layer of poly crisis. And
the fires are, you know, this is all climate change.

>> Loren (19:14):
California.

Uh, right.

>> Loren (19:15):
As we're recording.

Yeah, it's. It's what, um, Naomi Klein
called disaster capitalism. The way, ah, it works is
that it keeps having these poly
crises going on to distract people from really what's
going on in other places where they want you to look.

>> Loren (19:30):
Mhm.

And so I think that that's part of the world we're living in.

>> Loren (19:34):
I'm glad you mentioned that idea of disaster
capitalism and distraction. What
as I'm thinking too, like,
I think what in a couple days, supposedly TikTok is
or may not go away. Which I think we could
debate the merits of TikTok. But it certainly,
I guess a cynical view would be it does

(19:56):
serve to somewhat distract us from what's going on. But also
obviously there's some.

It's also information about what's going on.

>> Loren (20:01):
It also is about what's going on.

Well, this is the other piece of, I think the
polycrisis that's. I have no
solution for is the collapse
of a reliable media.

>> Speaker E (20:13):
Yeah.

So information is completely
random. Um, and faux
facts are everywhere and you have to
really be, you have to do your own work to figure
out what's true and not true and, and that's even
difficult. Um, but
uh, it used to be a few reliable
mainstream sources of media information were where

(20:37):
people got their information. Now it's everywhere. Social
media, email
blasts. I mean, it's. So there's that
um, and that process of getting information
is not collective. Ah,
it used to be that there were three networks. So you knew that your people
at school had watched one of those three networks. Works

(21:00):
right now. It's stuff on phones, it's stuff
on cable, it's everywhere.
And so there's a sort
of saturation, ah, point where
people are just too overloaded to sort it all
out. Um,
there was a study once done about, you know, when you, in a supermarket,
if you have 10 choices.

>> Loren (21:21):
Right.

Jelly. Yeah. And then you have three. If you
have three, people will buy one, but if you have 10, they look at it and walk
out because they can't decide. Right. And so it's sort of like
that with the media.

>> Speaker E (21:32):
Yeah.

You know, so I actually myself limit
myself to a few places where I'm pretty
sure it's reliable information. Um,
and then um, I look at stuff that I'm skeptical
of just to see what kind of crap is out
there. Um, but, uh, but it's
hard to have a democracy when there, it's when the

(21:53):
things are so fragmented that there's almost no consensus
about anything.

>> Speaker E (21:57):
Yeah.

>> Loren (21:58):
So this topic of seeking wisdom. Because I'm thinking about like
what you said about the many,
many voices and distractions we have from
uh, different media sources. I don't know if you. I didn't,
I didn't watch the movie Just because I found it so over the top.
But, um, there's the movie Don't look
up, which speaking of climate change.

Yes.

>> Loren (22:18):
Like, I found it, like, just too much. I was just like, okay, I get what they're trying to
do, but it's too much for me.

But it's like that.

>> Loren (22:23):
But yeah, certainly there's kind of that, like that where,
you know, there's so much distraction, so much
silliness. And I think
that's, I feel like that's almost the hardest thing
because it's not that we lack information. Like there's,
it's too much. There's too much information. How then
do we seek wisdom?

Well, I think the thing
that's compounding the problem
is that these media, forms
of media are highly individualized.
So we have an epidemic of loneliness and a
saturation of too much stuff.
Um, and there's no lonely. There's no
wisdom and loneliness. I mean, wisdom comes

(23:05):
from experience.

>> Loren (23:06):
That's good. Yeah.

It comes from being out in the world with others and
experiencing problems and figuring out how to solve
them and being with, with others and feeling supported and
connected to people. Because what's wisdom for if
it's just you having it? Right, right. It's really
to help the world and help others and to make the
world a better place. If you can be. As, as my.

(23:29):
One of my favorite ancient theologians
named Ambrose, who was the one that converted Augustine and
baptized him.

>> Loren (23:35):
Mhm.

So he's pretty smart. Yeah, well,
yes, well, Augustine's maligned in ways
that I think are unfair, but anyway, his favorite name
for God was beauty. Anybody that cares
that much about beauty, I have sympathy for. But,
But Ambrose said people think
innocence is a way to protect yourself from bad stuff.

(23:56):
But innocence is just basically
stupidity that if you don't know what evil
is, you can't avoid it, you might do it yourself.
And to learn that means being related to
the world and paying attention and looking
into what evil is
to understand it. Because otherwise you're just gonna
be stupid about it.

>> Speaker E (24:17):
Yeah.

And right now we need people who are wise about
these things. And, um, and as people are
more and more isolated, they're, they're, they're not
capable of you. You
cannot engage evil alone. Right, Right.
So. So that for me, that's why
having communities and friends and
connections that you can rely on

(24:41):
and be part of, um, is really, really
important. And I know when the pandemic started,
a lot of that stuff stopped for people because you were stuck in
your apartment or house by yourself or with your
dog or something. Right. You know I was with my cat.

>> Loren (24:55):
Right.

I got a cat so I wouldn't be alone.

>> Loren (24:56):
You and everybody else. Right?

Yeah. Right. And now I have three. So. But
anyway, um, and so
when that, when that started to happen,
then I had friends. We all agreed that
we would meet on Zoom.

>> Loren (25:11):
Mhm.

Right. So I have two regular
weekly meetings on Zoom. And that
started during the pandemic. But it was so useful
and so satisfying that we just keep doing
it because we don't live in the same
place. And before we counted on going on vacations
together and seeing each other at events and stuff like that, and we couldn't
do that. But now I feel even closer

(25:34):
to them because I see I'm on there every week with
them. So there's ways to use the technology
that can be helpful, but mostly it's atomizing
people.

>> Speaker E (25:43):
Yeah.

Um, and I. But you have to be deliberate and
intentional about creating community
now because so many people are suspicious of
institutions and won't invest time and energy in them.
So we're also not only losing the
connections of just casual, just friendship,
but also where institutions, where people

(26:04):
used to collect and be together.

>> Loren (26:07):
Why don't we stay on this term of the, the
decline of institutions? Certainly we're, we're here in an
institution talking about a broader institution that the
Christian Church Disciples of Christ there was
just released on social media this week data
about the decline of our denomination
and mainline process. And writ large

(26:29):
I'm thinking about,
maybe I'm making a connection that isn't there, but I'm thinking
about the disconnect
people have towards institutionalism. And a lot
of it is fair because of the
way, uh, this is where the connection between moral
injury comes because people have

(26:49):
protected the institution at.

The cost of individuals,
or they're just unjust institutions.
So the decline of the churches
started during Vietnam. And I
think there are a couple of
major factors involved in that.
One is, um, uh, it's not

(27:13):
the main one. So I'm going to talk about it in a minute. I think the
main problem was that
coming out of World War II, the
country was built
economically, ah, around a
focus on nuclear families with one
breadwinner. Um, and churches were also
set up that way. So the ways that

(27:34):
churches function was that you had a
family with one breadwinner and a bunch of volunteers that keep
the church going. Right. Who had time.
So now we have people
with two parent homes and nuclear
families with four jobs. They're both working two
jobs. It's the only Way to have a middle class life
because of the cost of health care and a whole bunch of

(27:57):
other housing and all of that. Um, and that
is an economic uh, issue that started
with Ronald Reagan.

>> Loren (28:04):
Mhm.

I mean it was, it was, it was a serious
shift of trickle up economics. So we have
billionaires and poor people. Right, right. So.
And every administration since
Reagan has contributed to the problem.
Some of them have tried to stop it in some forms
but basically the momentum of that billionaire
juggernaut has driven a huge amount of what's

(28:27):
happened now where college is out of the
hands of the middle class and you need a middle class
to have a democracy. Um,
uh, and churches can't survive because the
only one who has time to do any work is one minister.

>> Speaker E (28:42):
Yeah.

>> Loren (28:43):
Um, it really makes sense when you think
about the. Where churches are today.

Yeah.

>> Loren (28:49):
There's either like a bunch of tiny churches that can
survive because they're so small or they're like these
corporate behemoth.

Right.

>> Loren (28:57):
Churches who can afford a multi staff to do everything.

Right. Because a bunch of people who are willing to give money
to them. Right. Um, instead of
uh, doing that money for
social services. Right. Feeding the poor,
building senior housing and other things. Right. So
there's. Yeah. These
are religious empires. Right, Right.

>> Loren (29:19):
Yeah.

Ah. Um, and
um, with all the
problems you have with all of that, um, including
sexual abuse by ministers and like Mars church
meltdown, all of that. So because they
are built on a Christianity that's highly
authoritarian so you don't
challenge the minister. Um, and

(29:41):
so uh, those are I would
say anti democratic structures a lot.
But they're also having issues
because um, they're losing a lot of their
youth to homophobia. Right.
So there's some of these big
behemoth churches and empires but

(30:01):
a lot of evangelical churches are not surviving. And
I think, I think somebody did a study at one point as
there was that big boom in evangelical churches.
They said well nobody's studying the clothes of all the rural
churches so they look like they're
new people coming in. But in fact uh,
there's a lot of drainage of happening at the rural

(30:21):
levels because there's no jobs left there.
Right, right. So. So there, I think there's fundamentally
a major economic issue in North America, in
the United States anyway, um, that is
exacerbated by a kind of
cruel kind of capitalism that we have. It's
particularly cruel that we don't have universal health

(30:42):
care because that's the biggest factor in
bankruptcies.

>> Speaker E (30:46):
Yeah.

So that's a. Uh,
But Vietnam was The beginning of the death of
institutions, or not the death, but the
erosion of trust in institutions because of the
war. And in
fact, if Johnson hadn't
gotten caught and didn't have the courage to
end the war,

(31:08):
he had a great society plan to end
poverty. I mean, it was amazing what he wanted to do
as president. He couldn't pay for it because he had to pay for the war.
And the war meant he couldn't run for a second term.
To really implement the kind of society that
was sort of an echo of, uh,
fdr, that would take care of the middle
class. And it didn't happen because.

(31:31):
And there was that. And a
whole generation of us learned to distrust
the government because it lied and got a lot of
people killed.

>> Loren (31:40):
Right.

And I remember the New York Times op
ed about the end of, uh, when McNamara wrote
his autobiography and said, yeah, it was a
big mistake. Sorry about that.
The New York Times editorial was just
excoriating about it. They want a Pulitzer for it because
it was, it was just, it was

(32:02):
that kind of searing critique with this deep sorrow
built into it about what was done to a whole
generation by that bad war.

>> Loren (32:11):
And I feel like we have echoes of that in
Afghanistan and Iraq and Afghanistan.

So we have another institutional fit right.

>> Loren (32:18):
In the church where it's this kind of defend the
institution at all costs. And the
cost tends to be the human beings and their
soul.

I've been in two churches where the minister did
sexual things.

>> Loren (32:32):
Mhm.

Um, and um, uh,
actually one of them involved a
dean from Phillips that was the minister of my church in
Houston. And
he. Well, this was a
very long time ago, so I don't think I'm slandering anybody now
that's alive. But he,

(32:53):
uh, senior minister, very
prestigious. The church was really
big. Um, there was a very
large, um, you know, young, uh,
adult, like up to 35 or 40 class.
There was like a huge class. We,
we did a lot of social activities. It was just
wonderful. And then it began to shrink

(33:15):
and new people that visited didn't come back.
Um, and then we had
sponsors in their 50s.
And the woman who was in the couple of that group,
the couple accused the minister of
trying to rape her in her home.

>> Speaker E (33:31):
Oh man.

And she
fought him off.

>> Speaker E (33:37):
Yeah.

But she, she didn't shut up about it.

>> Speaker E (33:40):
Yeah.

We found out that he, as a
church investigated that he would pay these visits
to these new couples when the husband wasn't
home. Oh my gosh, it was really
bad. And
um,
so the personnel
committee spoke to Phillips

(34:02):
about was there a Problem at
Phillips. And he had been the dean
here, and
yes, there had. And
so they. The personnel committee in the church asked
why they weren't warned. M. And
the reply was, we didn't want to ruin a good

(34:22):
career.
So he ruined. I don't know if he ruined the.

>> Loren (34:29):
Church, but he ruined some lives.

He ruined a lot of lives. And the,
uh. I don't know, it was part of the decline
of Protestantism. So the decline in that church is probably part of a
larger trend. But it didn't help that this
guy was forced to resign and then took a
renegade group and started a church across
town of the people who didn't believe the charges or anything.
So that was the first time I encountered it. And

(34:53):
I actually, um. My ex
husband and I made an appointment to see him
and said, you need therapy. This is really bad,
what you've been doing this. You need therapy. We just
decided that it was. That
we wanted to do everything we could do. And
we thought it was. It wasn't. It was an okay

(35:13):
thing to go in and tell him that we believe the charges and that
he needed help rather than just shine him
on. So. And he started. He actually literally started
to shake and said, I'm afraid I can't do that
because I would fall off my pedestal.
That was. That was my first
experience with that. And then there was another instance where

(35:35):
the minister was charged, um,
with, um, you
know, inappropriate behavior in a counseling
situation. And it, uh. We had
a. He was very popular, very charismatic.
Um, and, um, the congregation had to take a
vote. And, uh, it was close, but

(35:55):
he was removed.

>> Loren (35:57):
Wow.

>> Speaker E (35:57):
Ah.

Um. But it split the church. That church never really
quite recovered. It kept going for a few more. You
know, it kept going, but it, um. Some of the
key. Most enthusiastic members left with him.

>> Loren (36:09):
I feel like this all ties into this idea
of the challenge of seeking wisdom. Um, when we think
about not only do we
have so many disparate voices, but
these institutions,
these sources of wisdom that historically have been
trustworthy places are seen
as less and less trustworthy,

(36:32):
many times deservedly so.

Well, this is. You know, ministers
are human beings and they're just as flawed as any other human
being. But the sort of aura that attends to
their authority, to speak the word and all that
is. It's
actually, um, probably not an ancient
church practice. There's

(36:54):
a pilgrim diary from a woman named
Egeria. They think she was from
Tarragon, Spain, and she spent a year. She probably was
a woman of means because she had a little entourage and she Spent a year on
a pilgrimage doing all the Christian sites in the Mediterranean
world. And she spent all of Lent and Easter
at Jerusalem, which was. She was thrilled
to do. But she, but she started in Spain, went all the way around North

(37:17):
Africa, across Europe. It's an amazing
pilgrim diary. But she was writing to her
women's community in Spain, so she's
talking to the ladies. And
in Jerusalem, during Lent, the
practice in the ancient church was Lent was when the
catechumens had to go through spiritual
exercises like fasting and education

(37:39):
in a preparation in six weeks to be baptized. Because they
baptize everybody one day of the year, which
was Saturday night before Easter Sunday. So they. So
she's there for this and she's thrilled. She's like, uh, she's
reporting on all these things that are happening. And the last week of
Lent is the most intense because the bishop gives the
creed and every day he gives a new line of the Creed. And

(37:59):
they have to learn the theology, uh, in. They don't just
recite the Creed, they understand the Creed. So, so the
bishop is doing this instruction in the Creed and she's there to
observe and
she writes this line and the
bishop gives the Creed. And
ladies, you would not
believe the arguing with the

(38:21):
bishop even more than when
he preaches in church.
So if you read between the lines in that
statement, the
bishop, uh, had people arguing back with
him to him in the sermon.

>> Loren (38:40):
Wow.

They didn't just believe what they were told.
And, and they were. And that model in Lent was they had
to own it.

>> Loren (38:49):
Mhm.

So the arguing was they had to own.
Wasn't just told to them. And they said, yes, sir. That was like,
well, what do you mean by that? Or what? You know, so the arguing
back. When we, my friend and I wrote this book, Saving
paradise, we found that, that diary. We were like, oh
my God, this is such a different model when we
hear the word Bishop. Yeah, right.

>> Speaker E (39:10):
Yeah.

Um, and so, but we have this idea
that when the minister says it, it's the word, it's preaching
of the. And the Protestants are worse at this than Catholics.
Right. We're so biblically trapped,
as it were, this in the, in our heads, around
Scripture instead of really in our hearts.
Um, and so in any case, the
whole idea that the minister is some

(39:34):
hallowed presence that shouldn't be
challenged is, um, really
dysfunctional. I think in an environment,
um,
I'm sure there was authority. The bishop had a lot of authority
and power, but it wasn't to tell people
what they had to believe.
Um, and of course, in the ancient church, the arguing about

(39:55):
theology was something they didn't like in coffee shops.
I mean, whatever we would think of.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, they lynched. They, they were
serious. They lynched bishops that they didn't agree with.
I mean, people got killed over these theological arguments.
So it was very intense.
Um, but people actually had an opinion.

(40:16):
Um, and it. So I don't know, I'm getting, you know, I
wouldn't recommend violence. Yeah, no, no, not that
part. But the, the. But the idea this is, I
think the problem, ah, with a
lot of the ways that the church works is
we believe that it's belief that unites us.

>> Loren (40:34):
Right.

And I do not believe that belief. I mean, my
opinions change all the time.

>> Loren (40:39):
Let's stay on this because the other half of this,
again the conference is seeking wisdom and
understanding.

Yes.

>> Loren (40:46):
So like you said, I think especially
Protestantism, especially has
been around. I mean, not our denomination, shout
out to the Christian church, saints of Christ.

Well, we're like, you believe whatever you want to believe,
but you read the Bible with some discernment. Right.

>> Loren (41:03):
But there has been that, like this idea that what unites
us is, at least broadly speaking in
Protestantism, is like adherence to a certain set of beliefs,
especially most, ah, recently, you know, in the last
century in American Christianity.
How do we change that to a
more allowance for
understanding?

I think where this is in
retrospect, I think where Protestantism,
um, failed to understand human behavior
was the debates were around the
Eucharist. The Eucharist was the flashpoint for the
Protestant Reformation because of the transubstantiation.
And what was the meaning of the body on the table? That was

(41:46):
true in ancient Christianity or in medieval
Christianity as well. Um,
um. And it focused on what you believe
was happening in the Eucharist. I
think the reason it was a flashpoint is it's ritual that
matters so much.
Um, and the Protestants, rather

(42:07):
than figure out how to do
ritual that worked, they gave
it up. I heard it over and
over in the lecture this afternoon about, uh, the,
uh, biblical texts from the prophets where they say, I hate your
rituals and I, blah, blah, blah,
as a very Protestant bias to select those
texts. Right. And I

(42:30):
think it's meant that we,
um, are very thin and weak on ritual.
It's um.
Even the ritual becomes an expression of a particular
person's belief system rather than being
a kind of, um,
what we know. For example, in any other form

(42:52):
of collective work, you have to
train people so that stuff is automatic in their
body.

>> Loren (42:58):
Yes, yes.

And uh, if they don't get it automatic in their
bodies, you can't tell an athlete,
you know how to do something and then they do it.
Yeah.

>> Loren (43:08):
You don't want them thinking during a game. You want them acting, acting.

Right. So you drill, drill, drill, drill. But behind
that is a commitment to the sport, A, uh, commitment
to doing well. And ritual is like
that. It's not meant to be. Every week you
change the words of something so people will think about it again in a
new way. You just do the same thing over and over
again and you recite the same.
Everybody's got to memorize. You don't have to read and you don't be looking

(43:34):
down. You're each other. Right. And
connecting. And so
it's actually the automatic
behavior of the recitation that delivers the meaning,
not thinking about the meaning.

>> Loren (43:46):
Right.

It's an embodied practice and Protestants are really
lousy at that. Yeah, I,
you know, it's like changing the language.
You can't do anything by memorization, so
it's not trained into you. You have to redo it every week to think
about. And that's a very weak way to create a community.

>> Loren (44:05):
I love this point because I'm thinking of an interview I
did. It'll be coming out before yours with David
Taylor. I don't know if you're familiar with him.
Can't remember. I think he's out of Fuller. But he has a
book on the body and worship and talks
about the importance of physicality
in worship and how the physicality. Of

(44:25):
course, I'm thinking shout out to our denomination
the weekly practice of communion
and how, if I'm understanding you
correct. Right. It's not the words we're saying that is really
making the impact, it's the action that is,
uh, teaching lessons to us.

Yeah. And it's sort of random because
it's so non formalized. Right, right.
So you never know when you show up in a
disciple church what you're going to be served and how you're going to get
it. Um, because we don't have
standard ways, we, we really do things.
And um, and I actually am

(45:02):
much more interested in,
in things like the Common Book of Prayer. And of course
you have problems inclusifying and adding trans and all
those. But so there's, there's those kind of language
adjustments. But really,
um, you know, I've been in several Protestant
churches for the prayer time. And then let
us pray as Jesus taught us to pray. And then you can't recite

(45:25):
the Lord's Prayer. From memory. Because they've got a whole
paragraph that's an interpr of it that you have
to read out loud together.

>> Loren (45:32):
Again, your point is. The point is
not the words, so to speak. It's the action of saying
it together. Hearing it. Hearing it.

Yeah. It's like the way I've been
profoundly moved. Occasionally I was at
a memorial service, and now I can't even remember who it was
for. But it was interfaith. It wasn't one
tradition. And I remember a
rabbi getting up and saying,
will you say the words with me?
Uh, and he just started

(46:03):
this 23rd Psalm, and everybody
knew how to say it, and it was like,
so powerful. The Lord is my
shepherd. I shall not want he make it. And
that's like. If there's two things that
everybody in Christianity has memorized. Is the
Lord's prayer in the 23rd Psalm?

>> Speaker E (46:21):
Yeah.

>> Loren (46:22):
And probably maybe Amazing Grace, too.

Maybe.

>> Loren (46:24):
Yeah.

Yeah. Especially Protestants, right? Yeah, yeah.
Methodists and Protestants. But. But that. Ah, but. But
really, uh, there's almost nothing else.
And for sure the Lord's Prayer. For sure.
The Lord's Prayer. So now they're all. I've been in these
Protestant services where you have to read the Lord's Prayer because
it's not the one, you know. Right, right. And it.
And so it's still just words. Right.

(46:47):
Um, but. But. And there's something about the. The way
the ritual itself, the. The memorized
words, the gestures, load all the meaning in.
You need.

>> Loren (46:56):
Yes.

So there's a. There's a wonderful book by Tanya Lorman
called How God Becomes Real.

>> Loren (47:02):
Okay.

She's a. She's not a real particular. She grew up
UU Unitarian Universalist. So she's. I
don't think she's particularly religious herself. Now, I've met her and talked
to her. It. And she wrote. And she is
a participant anthropologist. So when she studies
a religious group, she goes to the services and does the
work. And for her doctoral thesis, she

(47:23):
decided not to do the colonial
anthropologist thing and pick an exotic group somewhere
in a third world country and study them. She went to London
and studied Druids.
So she was there for a couple of months going to
druid ceremonies and being with Druids.
And she said she woke up one morning. I think
this is when she woke up. She looked out her bedroom

(47:45):
window, you know, just sort of when you wake up. And she
looked and she saw a group of Druids.
And she sort of blinked and looked again,
and then they were gone. And she
said. So she had been in these services for long enough
that she was seeing things that she
wouldn't have ever had before and

(48:07):
that she observes that it's
the repetition of the ritual
that makes that kind of putting in your body
system possible.

>> Loren (48:17):
See, this is my, uh,
soapbox that I think the best way to get
kids to hold onto their faith in adulthood is simply
bringing them to church regularly.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, I remember as a kid
I didn't understand the sermons really. But I love
singing the hymns. So I would sit down and
I would put a marker in every page where the
next hymn was so that I could open up right away and sing.
And as an adult, I still do that. I still mark the
hymn. The hymnal for the next song. So. Because I

(48:47):
can open it right away and I don't like to look for it while the
music's playing. Um, but that.
But we. We relic. The
reason I think also that people don't come back
to church as adults is that it's not in their body
system, so they don't miss it.

>> Speaker E (49:03):
Yeah.

Right. But if you grow up as a child and you have to make
the service child friendly. Right. But if you grow up
as child in the service and not like
in a play area separate from the service, where you don't have to
listen to it, but where you're sitting in a pew.

>> Speaker E (49:17):
Yeah.

That it really gets in your body system in a very different
way.

>> Speaker E (49:21):
Yeah.

Than. And you sort of miss it.
Why?

>> Loren (49:27):
Uh, it's interesting because, like, whenever I'm stressed out
driving, I'll turn on just piano
hymns.

Yeah.

>> Loren (49:34):
Because that's. For me, I heard them so much. Just kind of just
brings me down.

Yeah. And I love singing. You know,
just singing in my car. I sing hymns because it feels
really good to sing. And they don't usually play them on the
radio. So. But yeah.
Um, and there's
another really important work that
really influenced me in this shift I've really
made in the last 10 years around moral injury, because I think

(49:59):
ritual is part of the recovery process. Is a book called
Ritual and its Consequences. And it's
written by a team of five authors in one
voice. Um, and there's like
a Chinese historian of China and,
um, an anthropologist. And I mean, it's
a whole group of different kinds of scholars in different

(50:19):
disciplines that are. That.
That make a case that,
um, that ritual, uh,
is how meaning is delivered. Believe
it and. And that we
have an Enlightenment, Protestant
rationalist bias that
thinks it's like ideas that

(50:40):
matter and they're looking at
Confucian, um, traditions and other traditions that are highly
ritualized in terms of how they talk about
ritual. And I think we've inherited
the Protestant enlightenment anti ritual
bias that's also deeply anti
Catholic.

>> Loren (50:57):
Mhm.

And I think it's cost us a lot. Like our churches are
failing and cost us some
understanding. That too. That too.
But I think that that's part of the decline of
Protestantism is there's not enough there to hold people.

>> Speaker E (51:12):
Yeah.

And part of that is the anti institutional world
that we're living in based on failures of a
lot of institutions. It's not just the wars and
the government and
um, but it's also,
uh, religious institutions where they've had sexual
abuse scandals. It's like the
churches don't know how to pull people back together when those things

(51:36):
blow up. Right, Right. And
um, yeah.

>> Loren (51:40):
It's like we need. It's like.

Because there's not much else to hold.

>> Loren (51:42):
Yeah. It's like we need a ritual to say, like I just, I can't
remember the, where it came from, but I just got shipped a
book, the COVID talking uh, about lament. And some
people are trying to re. Explore the traditional
lament in Christianity. But like, exactly like that. Like
we need a tradition, we need a ritual when. Well, one of them
blow up to bring people together.

One of the most successful
movements in the modern world has been
Alcoholics Anonymous. Right, Right. It was
the Oxford movement that created. It
used the ancient Christian penance
system, which is the highly
ritualized process, highly
formulated. When you walk in, there's a formula for how

(52:23):
you say so you can go to
an AA meeting anywhere in the world.

>> Speaker E (52:28):
Yeah.

And it's the same.

>> Speaker E (52:30):
Yeah.

So it's highly successful.

>> Speaker E (52:34):
Yeah.

Right. It may not keep people from
drinking, but they drink. But they come back to it. Right. Because they miss
it.

>> Speaker E (52:41):
Yeah.

And they make sure you have a person who uh, a, uh,
sponsor. Right. They have a whole system, uh,
for supporting people going through
this intense penance process that
the higher powers really got. I mean, you know,
they've fixed it so you can attend and not have
to be a Christian looking for penance. But

(53:02):
they were studying. And in the ancient church, penance was
not punishment, it was rehabilitation.
That was the whole point of it. So you were
asked to do a particular discipline, um,
of praying and fasting. You had to
come to church in um,
plain clothes, like sackcloth to show

(53:22):
and you. But you didn't come alone. You were in the order of
penitence. So there were big enough churches,
so there were Always multiple people going through
penance. And you came to
church and you were required to be there, really that
they expected you to come, and then they, you
would go through the service of the Word. But then

(53:43):
when it came to the Eucharist, that was reserved
for baptized Christians
and, and so the catechumens
and the penitents, because when
you were a penitent, it was like you reverted to a pre
baptized state and so you couldn't stay.
And. But then when you were recommunic, that's what
excommunication meant. They didn't throw you out of the church,

(54:05):
they threw you out of the Eucharist.

>> Loren (54:07):
Interesting.

And we think it was like banishment, but no, it wasn't. It
was rehabilitation. You couldn't be in the Eucharist if your soul
wasn't okay. And if you were doing something
serious enough to require a term of penance, then you
needed to be rehabilitated so
you could be back. They didn't want to lose you, but they also didn't
want you there messing everything up.

(54:28):
Like you arriving as it were, drunk.
Right, right. No, that would not be acceptable. So they,
it was a very different sensibility about who could come to the
Eucharist and why they couldn't be there. You,
catechumens, they hadn't been baptized, penitents
reverted back anyway. It was. But it was highly ritualized
processing and it was a formal process. And

(54:48):
the other thing was that if you were marked as, uh, in
the order of the penitents, it was a responsibility. But
everybody else in the church to support you to get better.

>> Speaker E (54:56):
Yeah.

It wasn't about punishing you or shaming you,
although there might have been some of the shame. And you have to
confess what you did to the whole community.
Right. But then they would support you in getting better. That was
the whole point of it.

>> Loren (55:10):
How beautiful. Because I just think like when we think about our
society and we think about again, our
topic here of seeking wisdom and understanding in troubling
times. Like
my mind just bounces back and forth between
so many issues that these rituals, these
Christian traditions
inherently could solve.

(55:32):
Because we think about, uh, like I'm thinking
like cancel culture comes to mind, which
is based on someone's wrongdoing. But then it, you
know, there needs to be some ritual to hold them accountable, but
then to offer them acceptance back into the
community with them making penance.

And there was a, um, this is, you
know, I'm generalizing each, every region.
And they were connected churches, but there
were variations. But, um, I
think it was pretty understood that you could go through
a serious process of penance
once and if you did it again, then you couldn't
come back because you weren't fixable.

>> Speaker E (56:12):
Yeah.

So there was, there was a penalty, but then
you just couldn't come to church. You just weren't part of the community anymore. And
for a lot of people it was like, especially people who
were poor, they got fed there.

>> Loren (56:24):
Right.

Because they, once you joined and you were at the Eucharist
table, they had a commitment that everybody would be taken care of in
their community. And John Chrysostom talks about how his
church in Antioch fed. I mean, this is
round numbers, but 3,000 widows, orphans and
sailors and poor people every day from their
Eucharist.

>> Speaker E (56:43):
Yeah.

3,000 people. What? Even if that's a broad
number, 500 would be impressive. It's
impressive.

>> Loren (56:52):
300 is incredible.

I know. And they just brought the food with. The Eucharist
wasn't a symbolic meal, it was actually a
meal.

>> Speaker E (56:59):
Yeah.

For some people it was the only meal of their day. Um,
so they made sure it was. And the list of foods is
fun to look at. Um, there's
that second century list of acceptable
foods. And no meat,
no red meat because it was associated with blood
sacrifice. Um,

(57:20):
nothing that grew on the ground and touched the
ground because fertilizer is kind of dangerous.
And no vegetables to say have to be
cooked. So foods that didn't need to be cooked. And
so any fruit that like, of the vine, like
a grape, a peach, an apple that hung.
Most fruits were okay. Um,

(57:41):
and um, olives, cheese,
milk, all of those were okay things
that could be consumed right there. Uh, and of course
bread. So it's really interesting. Uh,
just a list of what, what's, what's, what was okay to
bring.

>> Speaker E (57:55):
Yeah.

Um, because what are you gonna do
with a, you know, a raw onion. Yeah, yeah,
yeah. And mushrooms are very bad because they grow, you know, in nasty
places. So. Yeah. And you, and you could
get a two toad stool. Right. So. So they, they had
rules about it. But the, uh, um. But there were,
you know, and, and people stood. There were no chairs.

(58:17):
Mm.

>> Loren (58:17):
Mhm.

And. And the services were two to three hours
sometimes.

>> Speaker E (58:21):
Yeah.

But there's processional people were moving and there was a lot of
movement and chanting and stuff.

>> Speaker E (58:28):
Yeah.

If you go to an Eastern Orthodox church, that's the
closest kind of service to an ancient church practice that
you'll find.

>> Speaker E (58:35):
Yeah.

Because they didn't go the way the Western
church did with crucifixion and
Crusades and awful things like that.

>> Loren (58:43):
Mhm.

Um, the ancient church didn't believe that Jesus died for our
sins. That whole ideology that God needs
violence to save us was not an ancient church
theology. They really thought he had
come in human form to teach us how to live, not how to
die. So the first book in the
Atonement by Anselm is why God became human was

(59:05):
to die. Never mentions the resurrection or
anything else much except that
to die.

>> Speaker E (59:11):
Yeah.

Um, we didn't figure this out in Saving
Paradise. There was another scholar who looked at that
in relation lot of other things and realize that
the idea, uh, that Jesus died for your sins is war
propaganda for the Crusades.

>> Loren (59:26):
Interesting.

Well, it emerges by right in
tandem with the Crusades.

>> Loren (59:32):
That's wild to think about. Well, we got to save that for another
time.

Okay.

>> Loren (59:35):
How much M. I don't know.
We're at, we're at 4:15 our time.

Oh, all right.

>> Loren (59:40):
So do you need to leave?

Um, yeah, I probably ought to get my, my,
my partner in crime here.

>> Loren (59:46):
Uh, we're kind of just ad. Living this, so.

No, no, this is.

>> Loren (59:49):
Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate the
conversation.

Yeah. I think the
turn that Western Christianity made
that has been the most difficult
and destructive of human,
uh, wisdom and um,
flourishing is the
theological turn to believing
that uh, we are,

(01:00:14):
um, broken and cannot be saved
by m and require,
um, the punishment to be visited upon
Jesus of how depraved we are and
that whatever he did to save us is
going to happen after we're dead.
Right, right.

>> Loren (01:00:33):
So the Christianity, salvation in this life.

>> Rita Nakashima Brock (01:00:36):
Well, there is, but it's. You wait for it.

>> Loren (01:00:38):
Right.

Yeah. Right. The church is a holding tank, as it were.

>> Loren (01:00:41):
Right, right.

And um, and that is not an ancient church
theology. Ancient church believed that the church's
destiny was to be the paradise in this world. And
so that was what it meant to have human life flourish
here. And so if you died, you just went to a new neighborhood
of paradise, but you already had at baptism
everything you ever needed for salvation. It was

(01:01:02):
there so that you could love
the world.

>> Speaker E (01:01:06):
Yeah.

Not say, this world is not my home. I'm just
passing through. Famous hymn.

>> Loren (01:01:11):
Speaking of a good hymn.

Yeah, right. No. And of course, climate change,
it's like you have this conservative,
God's just going to destroy it all anyway, so don't worry
about it. It's all part of the end times.
So we're going to get a whole new heaven and earth.
So it's very anti
flesh, anti world, anti creation.

(01:01:33):
Actually. Right. Um, and
um, I think that has allowed
us to think we can just exploit things and use them
and be indiscriminate about how we treat
everything. And so now we're
seeing in California the consequence
of um,
an otherworldly religion.

(01:01:56):
Um, Peter Brown, who was a very famous early
church historian at Princeton, he's sort of the.
I don't know if he's still alive now, but he's done
amazing work on antiquity and Christianity.
His sort of magnum opus, it's one of these end of
career books famous scholar can do is
a thousand year history of rise of Western
Christendom. And his

(01:02:18):
flat out thesis in that book is Early
Christianity was a life
affirming this worldly
optimistic religion.

>> Speaker E (01:02:28):
Yeah.

And that's why it succeeded.

>> Speaker E (01:02:31):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

>> Loren (01:02:32):
Offering people a better vision and a.

Community that delivered it. It isn't even just a vision or
a hope. It's a community that was responsible for delivering
a decent life for people. And
um, the only difference between this world and the
world of the dead is the death has
a veil between the living and the dead. And
Satan can't get through that veil. So

(01:02:56):
in the living world, creating paradise in the
church requires being wise about evil
and dealing with all the forces of death and destruction
as well as normal natural death and stuff.
But then when you died you could,
you could go and rest, um, because
Satan couldn't follow you there. And then if you were
arrested, you could come back and visit the living

(01:03:18):
and offer comfort and help. So they
believe that the dead of the church arrived at every
Eucharist first, or origin says that the dead
arrived first and the, and the. In the Eucharist table
was hosted by the risen Christ. Every Eucharist, every
feast, Jesus was there to host the table because he came
back because they all the dead could come back to the living.

(01:03:38):
Right. So our um,
metaphor, my friend Rebecca and I in Saving
paradise, our metaphor for this is that you work your whole
life in New York. You have a good life, but you know, there's bad
weather and traffic and crappy things and crime. You have
to deal with it. But basically you have a decent life
and you raise your kids and you die. Uh, or not die. But
then you retire and you go to a gated community in Florida. That's what it

(01:04:01):
meant to die. You got to go to a gated community where
it's really nice and you have to deal with all that stuff and you could
relax and enjoy it and you could
visit your grandkids and your kids in New York. If you wanted to.
Yeah, it was, it's, it was more, that was more of what
they thought about human life than um, than
death being a deadline. And you, once you cross it,
you were up or down and you couldn't come back and

(01:04:24):
people couldn't visit you either. I mean it's like there was,
um. And what's so silly about that idea
is everywhere in the world people have
visitations from the dead.

>> Loren (01:04:33):
Right?

It's a common human experience to
see the dead. I had a visit for my mother.
I mean I am a science. I mean, you know, it's like not.
I'm a modern person. I was just shocked when it happened. I had no
idea what was happening, but I knew what happened when it was over.
Um, and when I tell my story about that,
people come up to me afterwards. You know, that

(01:04:55):
happened to me. Who? And then they'll tell me their story.
Uh, so it's just a common occurrence. The only
person in the ancient world that argued with that position that the
dead could visit the living was Augustine.
And he argued with it because his mother had never visited
him.

>> Loren (01:05:10):
Interesting. That's one.
Interesting.

We could end with that. It's just very funny.
That's a, um, funny one. The credit I
give Augustine though, as a theologian is he
trusted his own experience to tell him things.
Um, you know, his confessions, tells. I mean he
really grounds a lot of his theological
stuff in his own experience. And that's a feminist principle.

(01:05:36):
Trust your experience.

>> Loren (01:05:37):
Interesting.

Yeah.

>> Loren (01:05:39):
Well, share how you're working now for the Volunteers of
America. Share if folks want to connect with
you, your book titles, anything like that.

Oh, okay. So my, my email is R Brock
Simple R B R O C K at V as
in Victor V O a dot org.
Um, and that's my email. It's the fastest
way to get to me. Um, and
M, my magnum opus is Saving
Paradise. M, um.

(01:06:07):
And I've made it a principle since I finished my doctoral
thesis and published my doctoral thesis as a single authored
book. I co author
with friends because I think the project is
better and it's a lot more fun to write with a friend than it is to do
it yourself alone.
So all of my books after my dissertation

(01:06:27):
were co authored and Saving
paradise is not the last.
The soul repair book on moral injury is a different
co authored work. But the work I
most love in terms of the theological
perspective is Saving Paradise.
Um, uh, and it's this.
What does it mean that

(01:06:50):
we can say the church is planted as a paradise
in this world
and where that idea got trashed in
Western Christianity with the
Crusades and the, uh, wars,
um, and then the colonization of the rest of the
world. All of that is related to the loss,
I think, of that. It isn't that there wasn't.

(01:07:12):
I mean, I think it's
a, um, an amazing
thing that in a world where the Roman
Empire oppressed people and
salted the fields of their opponents when they
defeated them, and the life
expectancy was under 40 years old and half
of all infants died, and malaria

(01:07:35):
and cholera, I mean, these normal diseases were
just deadly. Um, and
like 10% of the people live beyond 50
in a world like that. They could say the
church is planted as a paradise in this world.
I, um, think we could say that too.

>> Speaker E (01:07:53):
Yeah.

>> Loren (01:07:54):
Well, I really appreciate your time and your
conversation. Always leave folks with a word of
peace. So may God's peace be with you.

Thank you. And also with you.

>> Loren Richmond (01:08:07):
Thanks for joining us on the Future Christian Podcast.
The Future Christian Podcast is produced by Resonate
Media. We love to hear from our listeners with
questions, comments and ideas for future
episodes. Visit our website at, uh,
future-christian.com and find the
Connect with us form at the bottom of the page to get
in touch with Martha or Loren. But before you go,

(01:08:29):
do us a favor. Subscribe to the podcast to leave a
review. It really helps us get this out to more
people. Thanks and go in peace.

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