Is the Church Coping Well with Pluralism?

Darrell Bock: 

Welcome to the Table where we discuss issues of God and culture to show the relevance of theology to everyday life. I'm Darrell Bock, Executive Director for Cultural Engagement at Dallas Theological Seminary, as well as senior research professor of New Testament there. And our topic today is coping with pluralism. And I have three outstanding guests to help us negotiate where the church finds itself in the world today and actually where you find yourself in the world today. Because we all have to cope with the variety of ways people try and live life around us. And so let me introduce them one at a time. Vincent Bacote is Professor of Theology and Director of the Center for Applied Christian Ethics at Wheaton College in what today is cold, Wheaton, Illinois. Vincent, thanks for being a part of this. 

Vincent Bacote: 

Good to be here. 

Darrell Bock: 

And then Danny Caroll Rodas is Scripture Press Ministries Professor of Biblical Studies and Pedagogy. I had to take a big breath to get that all out, and has majored in teaching the Old Testament prophets. He's also at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois. Danny, thank you for being with us. 

Danny Carroll Rodas: 

Am I supposed to say thank you Darrell? 

Darrell Bock: 

You can. Now, I probably should say this right at the start, Danny and I grew up together. We've known each other since second grade, so you'll hear probably some banter that reflects the fact that we know things about each other that no one else should know. So just be aware of that as we go back and forth. 

And then third is Kristen Johnson, who's Associate Professor of Theology and Christian Formation at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Michigan. She's also the author of a book we're going to probably discuss at some point. It's called Theology, Political Theory and Pluralism: Beyond Tolerance and Difference. So we'll be drawing on her expertise there when we get to that point of our conversation. Thank you Kristen, for being with us. 

Kristen Johnson: 

Pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me. 

Darrell Bock: 

So we are going to discuss coping with pluralism. And I have given pluralism lectures around not just the country but the world for several years. And I was about three or four years into this when I read a Barna study that shocked me. And what it said was is that 60% of the population doesn't even know what pluralism means. So here I was talking on something, assuming that everyone knew what I was talking about. And lo and behold, they had no clue what the topic was and what it meant. So I thought, well, I'm not going to begin the podcast that way. I'm going to begin the podcast with the definition of pluralism. 

So the simple definition is, the presence of two or more groups that coexist. So you've got plural entities that are functioning side by side that are sharing space. A slightly more technical definition would be a state of society in which members of diverse ethnic, racial, religious or social groups maintain and develop their traditional culture or special interest within the confines of a common civilization. And so what I like to tell people, it's the difference between culture and cultures. 

And oftentimes in thinking about this, and we think about, we talk about our culture, but in fact, we all operate with both the larger culture that we're a part of that really isn't as united as that word might suggest. And the various cultures that we come out of that rub against each other, I always compare it to geology and plate tectonics, the plates rub against each other. You get enough tension, guess what you get? You get an earthquake. So that's a definition of pluralism and coping with difference is really what we are talking about. 

So I'm going to ask a general question to start off with, but I'm going to make an observation first. And that is that when you're in public space, at least in many countries of the West, the way this works is when you're in a public space, your religion, this is going to sound shocking. Your religion means nothing. Here's what I mean by that. Whether you're an atheist, an agnostic, a Buddhist, a Hindu, a Presbyterian, a Catholic, a Baptist, whatever, we all have the same rights, we all have the same right to be sitting at the table discussing what the world that we live in is supposed to be like. And so just using that picture, here's my first question, just using that picture, how hard has it been for the church to live with that reality? And I'll let anyone who wants to step forward go first. 

Danny Carroll Rodas: 

You know, if I can just make kind of a quick thing, Darrell, you know, I think where you may be going is that this country was kind of Christian, generally accepted early on. But you know, as I look back, because of my own family background, my father was the son of Irish immigrants, very Roman Catholic. And from the beginning of the republic, there was a strong anti-Catholic strain. And my mother was Guatemalan. And so even within the Christendom of the United States, there was persecution and isolation, in the Irish ghettos, the Italian ghettos, which were Roman Catholic. And sometimes I think we think we've lost something, but we've idealized what that beginning actually was, and we had deists. So we had deists, we had Catholics, we had Protestants of various... And then in the Revolutionary War, of course, the conundrum for the Anglicans was whether they would support the British as Church of England, and the Crown, or would they- 

Darrell Bock: 

Become Episcopalians. 

Danny Carroll Rodas: 

Yeah, even within the Christendom so to speak, that people kind of longed to go back to it. It was more complicated than we may remember. 

Darrell Bock: 

Kristen, what's your feeling about the fact that when we walk into public space, in one sense our religion doesn't mean very much? 

Kristen Johnson: 

Yeah. I appreciate the way that you unpacked that a little bit in terms of the rights that we have, that we all should have equal rights around the table and equal opportunity to participate in the public realm. I very much agree. There has been an approach within political liberalism that's not liberal versus conservative, but it's a way of structuring political life, often within the context of pluralism that has tried to suggest that religion should not be allowed into public discourse. That religion is a conversation-stopper. You may sometimes hear that terminology. So if that's what we mean, then I'm less comfortable because I do think a robust political society marked by difference allows space for people to bring in the depth of their convictions and be able to share why and how they reached that conviction. Even if it feels risky, I think we can find common ground. 

Darrell Bock: 

Yeah, I'm going to come back to that because that's kind of the place I want to go next, which is thinking through what we do and what we don't have and think a little bit about how religion and society work in different societies that we may be familiar with. I tell people there's a separation of church and state that also is a part of this that goes back to our origins. That's where I want to go next. But that actually manifests itself in three very different ways, even in the West. So I'm going to tell people, you have a cache, it's called a brain, push the save button on the cache. We're coming back to that, okay? Because that's an important thought. Vincent, what would you like to add to our starter here? 

Vincent Bacote: 

I think it depends upon what you mean when you say that religion doesn't matter, or religion isn't cashing out in a particular way because everybody is showing up as the persons that they are. They're not leaving those things behind. So I think it's also what conception of public that we're talking about. And I think to Danny's point, there is this kind of romanticization about what religion was. I remember my colleague Tracy McKenzie surprising me by telling me that church attendance in the 19th century was not what people thought it was. It was somewhere like 22% or something like that is what he was saying. The mythology would suggest to you that because of the genuinely religious influence, and the religious language that people may have been familiar with, that that meant that everybody was going to church. 

But that's not the case, right? So anyway, the point is if you have that mythology, the mythology suggests, well everybody was going to church all the time, et cetera, et cetera. And it's always been much more complicated than that. I mean, it was certainly part of the general ethos that people had. And now what I would say is specifically the point you made is that if by religion playing a certain role or playing no role, you mean that it's not running the show, that's one thing, right? It's another thing if you mean that people have to have amnesia about being religious people, or having worldviews that they bring with them into the public, because those things are part of what form them. They show up in whatever ways that they are thinking, talking, speaking, whatever commitments they have, whatever priorities that they have. It's at least playing a role for people in that, even if people don't foreground the religious commitments. So I think the question is how is that functioning in terms of the way that people are showing up in the public? 

Darrell Bock: 

Okay, so let me make this distinction because I think the point you're making is an important one, and that is what we're talking about is the way society is structured to allow for the presence of religion in the public space. It's one factor among many. And in that sense it matters because who we are matters. As individuals, not just as collectives. On the other hand, there is, as you pointed out, no sense of privilege about the role of religion in public space. It's set up that way. And this takes us to where I wanted to go and why I said put a cache on what Kristen said because part of what's going on here is that sometimes we are said to have been a Christian country. And I think that's an oversimplification. We actually, Michael Novak wrote a book on two wings, and his point was we were an interesting hybrid when we were formed between enlightenment values on the one hand, and the presence of a Judeo-Christian ethic, which was respected on the other. 

So even if you were a deist, your rhetoric would apply to God and things that were part of Christian rhetoric and Christian background because you respected the ethic that came with Christianity. And that was like a net that kind of wove society together to a certain degree. But we really were also founded on enlightenment principles. And those enlightenment principles were an attempt to marginalize the influence of religion because of the impact that religion had had on the history of Europe with its religious wars and conflicts for centuries in which Europe came to the point of saying, "If this is where religion is going to take us, this isn't helpful for us as a society to constantly be in battle with one another." 

And then I tell people when I look at our world today, and we have largely shed the Judeo-Christian net that wrapped around our culture in certain parts of the country, certainly more than others, but generally if it's not gone, it's frayed. So that's one wing. It's hard to fly a plane with one wing. And now even the enlightenment value of just tolerance, which we're going to come to when we talk about Kristen's book is fraying. And now our plane is a fuselage that's more like a missile, and putting us in a precarious place in relationship to each other if we don't wrestle with how to actually function as a society and a people's made up of differences and in some cases significant differences. And how do we do that well and be authentic to who we are as individuals in which for many of us, religion is a defining feature. So I think what I've just done is define the nature of the problem, what it means individually to be in this space as someone who has a religious belief, and how I carry that religion into a public space. 

A public space and whether I have a religion or not, my rights are still the same, my privileges are still the same. That's the tension, so how do I argue for what I believe and say to someone else, "I really think this is beneficial for how we ought to live. How do I function in that kind of a space?" So that's my definition of our problem, what we mean by coping with pluralism and what anyone, any listener is going through as we think about this and as they wrestle with this. 

So anyone want to add anything to the origins of our country part of this? Because I think that's also an important thing because sometimes we tell the story in a way in which religion has a very privileged position, and I like to use this illustration, sorry to keep putting examples in front of us, but I help people conceptualize, in one sense we've gone from being the home team to being the visiting team, only we're not just the visiting team, we're the visiting team who are the rivals who get booed. And so that's a very different position to be playing a game in, isn't it? 

Vincent Bacote: 

Yes. Although because of the day in which we are recording this, I think that there are some people who think that we are less the rivals that are getting booed now because of a change of administrations. Now of course that could be really a kind of fictive, an imaginative thing that people are thinking. But there are people I think, who are imagining that there's a kind of a new reality of a kind of privileging thing. Now what they are imagining I think is actually to your point about this Judeo-Christian ethic and enlightenment values, we really kind of like a modern, really more postmodern kind of way of functioning your truth is what I want it to be. 

But also people wanting to have a very contextualized or baptized version of the country that is sponsored by whatever they think Christianity is supposed to be. And so I think there are people who think that that is now sort of in their minds more getting to just edging into being the home team. I mean, I think if we look at the way that society is actually functioning, I think what you're saying is more true, but I think that there are some people who are perceiving right now that there is at least, I'm going to call it an illusion of an emerging or potentially emerging kind of hegemony. 

Darrell Bock: 

Okay. And of course what that comes is with not just some sense of we won the last election, if I can say it that way. And so we are now going to have things our way, and of course what you've got are two groups, and largely in our society we have two groups aligned against each other in many ways with two very different visions of what our country ought to be and who gets privileged in it, et cetera. And we're in a clash. And that's how many people see our society. So here's the question, how does the church cope with that when the church's, I think goal in part is how do we help people actually get along? Yeah, Danny, I think I heard your voice. 

Danny Carroll Rodas: 

Yeah, yeah. The only way, the only thing I would say is the way I'm listening to you frame the question is kind of Christians against the non-Christians. The we/they thing, but, because of the kind of stuff I do like with immigration, there's a lot of screaming the last week or so, even within Christendom, if I can use that. 

Darrell Bock: 

Right. 

Danny Carroll Rodas: 

There's... 

Darrell Bock: 

There's an internal clash. 

Danny Carroll Rodas: 

There's a deep internal clash. 

Darrell Bock: 

That's right. 

Danny Carroll Rodas: 

It complicates it because who are the we that we're talking about? And even in the family, we won't even talk to each other at Christmastime or something. You know what I mean? This kind of dichotomy, which is you wish there were some adults in the room, right? But I mean, so it complicates it because you've got the Christian versus everybody else kind of thing. But then within the house itself it's very antagonistic, accusatory, condemning, going both directions. 

Darrell Bock: 

And that's why I use the term cultures to start off with, because what we have are various subcultures rubbing against each other. And some of those subcultures are within the larger society as a whole. But even within the church there are these subcultures as well that see the world differently et cetera. And the more the merrier, the more groups we have, the merrier the problem, because now we got to figure out how do we live with these differences? How do we function in a society where we're side by side, we share the same space, we coexist, how do we do this? Now pluralism in the way it's designed, because Kristen alluded earlier to the kind of political liberalism, not liberal and conservative, but the structure of a pluralistic society. Pluralism assumes that diversity is beneficial to society and that autonomy should be enjoyed by disparate, functional and cultural groups within that society. 

I mean that's at the heart of what pluralism is. And so you have religious groups and trade unions and professional organizations and ethnic minorities. You have all kinds of these combinations that exist side by side with one another. And part of the idea of pluralism is there's an element of that that's healthy. There's an element that benefits all of us. It has the potential hopefully to keep us from certain blind spots that we otherwise might possess. And it's the way our society functioned and the way many governments in the west have been structured has been to tolerate and to in some ways promote this existence of difference without a sense of privilege. Although it varies. I said earlier I would talk about three different ways separation of church and state have been handled in the West. So this is the place to do this. 

So in the United States, the way this happens is that everyone is able theoretically to speak and speak up for their religious faith and to express their faith and have freedom of conscience, et cetera. That's the American model. The model that you get in France is not that. The model that you get in France is public space is secular space. And religious expression is defined to the margins. This is why when Muslims asked to be able to wear burkas in certain public spaces, this was prohibited by France because it was a violation of the way they see separation in church and state. And so that's a slightly different model. 

In Germany it was different than those two models. In Germany, you go into the schools, and religion not only is allowed in public space, but everybody's there. All the religions and all its various forms show up in public context. It's taught in the schools. Our daughters went to public schools in Germany when I was on sabbatical and they had a religions class that was there and promoted by the school, et cetera. But everybody was there including one month that extended beyond that. But it was supposed to only be taught for one month on satanic worship, and ended up being longer than that. But that was included because it was religion. And so that's a completely different view of separation of church and state of what you get in the U.S. or what you would see in France. 

So even the way we handle these spaces is different when we think globally about what goes on around us. And of course we haven't even mentioned an unspoken part of this, but was probably hidden in some of what Vince was raising. And that is, in your location within society, your social group and/or your ethnic background impacts how much you feel a part of the larger cultural story, and how you relate to it. So we've spent half our time problematizing where we are and why coping with pluralism is such a challenge. Because it is. So now my question is, and kind of turning the pages, so how should we deal with this amount of difference that we find ourselves in? And this is where I think Kristen's work is so helpful in making us think about this. So Kristen, I'm going to ask you to briefly summarize what beyond tolerance and difference means, and why you think that's an important way to think about how we function in society. 

Kristen Johnson: 

Thank you, you've put so much rich food on the table here. There's so much to say. I think I might start by just drawing on a thread from earlier and connecting it. I think that the origin story of the U.S. is significant and one of the reasons I think it's hard when we look back to recognize that not everyone maybe was a Christian who used God language was because of what you said, the sort of overarching framework. So Thomas Jefferson for example, who was very avowedly, a deist, but still would use God language. And then we look back at that and we don't have all those same categories and so we think, oh, there was this very robust Christian thread, but it was more nuanced on the ground at the time. 

I think that enlightenment piece is so significant that those values were very shaping with the assumption that if we undertook the enlightenment project and prioritized reason over a faith tradition, we would come to a consensus, we would find unity, and that we could shape a society around that, that would enable us to push through some of our differences. They didn't use difference language then, but that was the idea. 

So they hoped that by having the courage to use our own reason, we would find common ground that everyone could adhere to. And that didn't prove to be true in reality. And so that's I think where my project began was it was the time when postmodernity was kind of trickling down and everyone was trying to grapple with what does this mean for us as Christians? And it seemed like there were some unhelpful options on the table, like either to get along in a diverse society we have to really shelve our differences, we have to pretend that we all believe the same thing. And that's where tolerance has a technical historic definition and then it has a popular level definition. And the popular level at that time was very much to tolerate means don't believe anything very deeply because that's what hurts people when you- 

Darrell Bock: 

And don't bring it up. 

Kristen Johnson: 

And don't bring it up. And in true tolerance, I mean the tolerance that was actually essential within our founding as a nation was supposed to be not always embodied but was supposed to be you may find things morally reprehensible in the person with whom you're conversing, but you nevertheless agree to allow them to exist. And even to have a voice. So tolerance isn't we agree, it's that we actually might have a really profound disagreement, but we think there is space. And that John Inazu has done some important work, a legal scholar in a book like Confident Pluralism trying to say let's not forget this part of our heritage that we used to be able to carve out space for that. 

But it became a more shallow notion over time. And I think even the original notion, I worry a little bit about the extent to which it was connected with some enlightenment ideals that are not always compatible with Christianity, but that's going to maybe a little technical. So difference then came on the scene within the intellectual history there was this tolerance, how do we tolerate each other when we disagree? And then there was kind of this postmodern or Post-Nietzschean embrace of difference. We really want to have space for difference and the celebration. 

And in some ways they were rightly critiquing this enlightenment idea that we, if we use our reason, we're going to come to common ground and that's how we're going to structure ourselves in the context of pluralism. And they were saying it doesn't work and what you're actually doing is suppressing diversity of suppressing difference because we're not all the same, and you're trying to pretend that we all are included under maybe a Judeo-Christian umbrella. So I found in that narrative something really interesting and I think a space for maybe a Christian contribution to the conversation if the reality of pluralism is we are living surrounded by people who believe different things and embody different ways of life, what is our response? 

And I didn't feel like either one, technical tolerance or this unfettered embrace of difference actually when you look at the scholars or really how it played out on the ground had enough space for Christians to really be fully faithful and embody their faith. So I was drawing on Augustine historically and a lot of other conversation partners in the contemporary theological landscape to say, is there another way? I've been talking for a long time, but maybe I'll just put one other thing on the table and then we can pick up wherever is helpful. That posture I think is part of what you're getting at. 

I mean there's both the intellectual or theological categories we want to bring to the conversation and that's what I was trying to explore. Are there different categories we can be drawing on from within the Christian tradition to help us in this holistic landscape but still hold our beliefs and still say not only do I believe Christ to be the way and the truth and the life, I can actually try to persuade you of that, that that's okay, that there is something about evangelism, no matter your conviction, if you really believe it to be reality, that you would want to invite people to seriously consider that. And then you get into then how, the posture question or the dispositional question, how do you go about that persuasion? 

And that's where I worry about where we are today as Christians within this context of conflict. Pluralism doesn't have to mean polarization, it doesn't have to mean culture wars. That is what it has developed into in the U.S. context. And I worry that from a Christian formation perspective, we've absorbed that fighting posture as what we need to do to defend the truth rather than lots of biblical evidence towards things like the fruit of the spirit and postures of being quick to listen, but slow to speak. And how do we let those parts of scripture shape our interactions so that we're holding our convictions very deeply, but interacting with generosity. That's where I think- 

Darrell Bock: 

So your point is that there's an element of tolerance that allows us to function side by side with one another, but how we tolerate one another is important. The nature of difference is a reality that we have to cope with, but how we live out our differences in shared space is important. And you're arguing for a kind of engagement that you engage and you engage with your whole person, which takes us back to something Vince mentioned earlier, which is some people don't want to put their religion on the shelf and marginalize it. It's a part of who they are. So how do we do that well? 

And then let me add one more element to the table and then I'm going to throw it open and hopefully this is like red meat going to hungry lions. And that is, The Great Commission calls us to reach out to people who are not in the church, who don't believe in God, who don't currently have a relationship with him, which means that people who are outside the church are not the enemy, they're actually the goal. So that's a interesting menu. Put that together for me. What does that mean about how we should be coping with the nature of difference in the way we do our engagement? I think Kristen's exactly right, that the issue is how to engage, not that you put your convictions off to the side, but you have your convictions. How do you engage? 

Vincent Bacote: 

There are a couple of things that come to mind for me. Number one is, first there's what's our expectation of what our participation is going to be like or what's necessary for our participation? In other words, is it necessary for me to have to be in charge, or for me to be on a goal of establishing a certain kind of social order in order for me to feel like I'm able to participate? And of course then if we think about the mission part of it, then that would include converting people to be on our side. Hey, if you're on our side, it's great for you. So there's that piece of it. But then there's this question of this is a disposition piece. When Paul's talking in Romans 13 after the government part, he then talks about how all of what we'll call the horizontal commands are all summed up in love your neighbor as yourself. 

And then he says at the end of that, "Love does no harm to a neighbor." And if the neighbor is any human being, then whatever our aspirations are, wherever we are, if we're in say Saudi Arabia and North Korea, or if we're in a republic like ours, then that would suggest, or more than suggest, that we are not ever given permission to act like we're at war with the neighbor, but that we are trying to seek good for the neighbor. And that however we're speaking, persuading, even if the persuading is getting kind of tense, the goal is not okay, I'm first thinking about how I'm going to win more than anything else. The question is, how am I thinking about, unless it's win the person, by the way. 

Darrell Bock: 

Right, right. 

Vincent Bacote: 

I mean winning like society, like takeover. 

Darrell Bock: 

Exactly right. Right. 

Vincent Bacote: 

And so I think a posture of not doing harm to neighbors while recognizing that Christianity is a witnessing faith. So it's an outward oriented faith. Yes, it's an internally transforming faith as well. Yes. But it's also an outwardly oriented faith. And so with that outward orientation, then there's obviously articulating the gospel. But none of that requires me to be a person that has to feel like I must regard the other person as the enemy. 

And it also means, I think this is an important thing about the moment that we're in. It also means that whatever the stakes seem to be for Christians at the point, whether we're more in charge, less in charge, more persecution, less persecution, et cetera, I don't have permission to be the person who thinks that the goal gives me permission to set aside whether I do harm to neighbors because of a commitment to being right or a commitment to a particular vision of society. And so I think to me, I think a lot of that gets lost in the ways that people are thinking about it. 

If somebody's thinking we're losing something, and you're thinking about getting it back, whatever it is you think you're getting back, that means that's the thing. And sometimes you've got to put people in your place, be mean, et cetera. My response is, have you read the second-greatest commandment? Because if you were the person who was on the other side of somebody thinking that society ought to be a particular way, do you want to be treated with disrespect? Do you want to be someone to harm you? You probably don't. 

Darrell Bock: 

And you complain about it if you receive that kind of treatment. 

Vincent Bacote: 

Yeah, yeah. And so I think thinking about not doing harm to the neighbor while sharing convictions. In a way, part of me I was listening, I'm thinking, if you think about Paul in Acts 17, that he's with these, turn out to be culture despisers that he's sharing the story, right? And he's making his point, but he is not condescending to them and he is not seeking anything that is ill. He has no ill will toward them, even though he desperately wants them to know, hey, here's the real deal. Christ has been risen. And that's really like the answer to everything in history, et cetera. And of course everybody doesn't like that, but the response is, and then Paul went away and he was really angry and thought about how he could take over the rest of the Roman- 

Darrell Bock: 

Take over Athens. 

Vincent Bacote: 

Yeah, yeah. 

Darrell Bock: 

Danny, you have anything you want to add? I want to come back to Acts 17. It's an important text. 

Danny Carroll Rodas: 

Yeah, I want to say a couple of things. One is, there's a whole other dimension that's not appearing in this conversation and I don't know how we get away from it. And for instance, all this talk recently about Christian nationalism. Well if you know anything about the Christian faith, the Christian faith around the globe is a history of Christian nationalism, my own Latin American background. You want Christian nationalism, look at the Spanish conquest of the Americans and the theological justifications for that and all the terrible things that it led to, which still ripple today we live in Britain exporting the Christian faith to the British colonies. 

And if you go back to any religion in the history of the world, they all are nationalistic. Whether you see the rise of Hindu nationalism in India today, or you go back to my area of work, the Assyrians and the gods who are with them in their armies as they conquer the world. I mean, so how religion inherently throughout time and every religion has been co-opted by ideology. And so that complicates this whole discussion, the co-optation of left and right Christians by a reigning ideology that they buy into and that gets put with a political party. That's one discussion that I don't know how we can talk about pluralism without doing that. The other thing is sometimes we kind of think that we have this Christian faith and we have to engage the public, but the problem also is the public is permeating the Christian faith. And so we have consumerist Christianity for instance. 

We have students in our classrooms that are just imbibing through social media a whole way of looking at the world that is either non-Christian or even anti-Christian and it becomes normal. And so the public discussion is not just how do we engage Christians and non-Christians in a pluralist society when part of this is going to be how do we even maintain the Christian faith in a consumerist society which promotes this? And that's a whole other discussion of how to engage the public square. And that goes more beyond this podcast Darrell I know that. But those are two things, ideology and our cultural consumerist context that is going to complicate the pluralist discussion. 

Darrell Bock: 

So what you're raising now is a formation dimension and an impact dimension to this conversation which influences and locates us in one sense and that we need to be aware of or else we will be dislocated in what it is that the Bible and scripture is calling us to do and be. Because at its core, Christianity is not nationalist at its core. Christianity is transnational or multinational. I don't care what prefix you put on it. I often say that Christianity is an anti-tribal message in a tribal world. And God took Jews and Gentiles who didn't get along in the first century at all and said, I'm going to make you family and I'm going to put you in the same community and you're going to have to figure out how to live together. 

And actually, if you look at most of the New Testament, this is fascinating. When I first became a Christian, I used to always ask myself, what's all this jew/gentile stuff going on? It seemed such an imposition into. It just seems so odd. 

Vincent Bacote: 

But it actually was the point all the second half of the epistles is about. 

Darrell Bock: 

How do we put Jews and gentiles in the same room and have them function as community together? And what is it going to take to do that? To which the answer is a lot, a lot of work and a lot of the spirit of God because you're not going to go there by default. And so you're talking about formation things, it makes me think, well we've got part one now we can think about part two. But around that I think is this point I'm going to put out as our close because we're running out of time this talking point that comes from an article written 30 years ago by Dallas Willard. 

So think about that. And I think it's valuable to think about an article that was asking this question 30 years ago, not in the time that we're in now, but makes a point that I think is easy to forget. It says this, and when I say this, I think about the early church because the early church had no cultural power, no social power, no political power. All it had was spiritual power. Their only identity marker was their position in Christ in terms of how they functioned in the Greco-Roman world. Here's what Willard has to say. The Christian gospel does not require cultural privilege or even social recognition in order to flourish. God's work is not disadvantaged by persecution even to death and much less by mere pluralism. Good statement, helpful statement. 

Kristen Johnson: 

I think it's a very helpful statement and would want to say, building on so many of these threads, so thankful we got to this question of formation because I do think this is at the heart of so much of this. And I think the resources within scripture of recognizing Christ who came to break down every dividing wall as Ephesians tells us that this is at the heart of the gospel and something we have to wrestle with how we can embody. And also looking back, you helpfully had us look around the world at different models of church and state. Looking back, I mean our own origin story as a whole faith tradition is not Christianity in a privileged position. They could never have imagined having power within the empire. 

And for me, discovering Augustine of Hippo who was writing during the fall of the Roman Empire and trying to say we could never have imagined Rome falling, I should say the fall of Rome and somehow the church survives and Christ is the king on the throne, and that has to ground everything else. The lamb on the throne is still reigning. And if that could be our posture, our conviction that shapes our posture of trust and interaction in light of Christ and his ongoing reign, I think that would have a very formative impact on our engagement in the world. 

Darrell Bock: 

And as I listen to you, Kristen, I think of something that I reflect on when I think about the Old Testament. And that is you had God's people, you had God's law, you had God's presence, everything was done externally, everything should have been right. And what's the history of Israel like? It's a mess. Why? Because there needs to be an internal transformation. And Jeremiah at the end of that testament says, you know, the reason we've got a new covenant, the reason we have the gospel is because God's got to do work from the inside out. And without that, every other attempt to do this is going to fall short. And that's why the gospel and our mission is important in keeping front and center who we are and how we go about reflecting what it is that Christ did, that God was rich in mercy when he saved us, that he loved us despite our back being turned to him, that we were not worthy of what he did for us. 

All those kinds of things that are supposed to shape and form how we walk into public space and how we handle public space. Even the idea of, I'll use this for the cross, even the idea of losing, well that in one sense Jesus ending up on a cross was losing, but he won because God is bigger than the loss that a human being can throw at another human being if we'll connect to him. So I think that's important to what we're saying. Can we give you each a chance to say a last word? And as we've all suggested, we have begun a discussion. We have not exhausted a discussion by any means. So Kristen, I'll let you go first. 

Kristen Johnson: 

Oh, I'm thinking about the imagery of be like trees from scripture and this call on God's people to be like trees. And I find this a very helpful image for thinking about pluralism, deeply rooted in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, allowing very wide branches to grow so we can find places of overlap with people who have differing convictions, but we can find common cause. Not always, there will be differences, but we don't have to be afraid of deep roots and we don't have to be afraid of finding the places where branches might overlap so we can care together about certain issues for the flourishing of the world. So I find that a really helpful biblical image for the context of pluralism. 

Darrell Bock: 

Danny. 

Danny Carroll Rodas: 

Well, I think you and Kristen are kind of closing with sermons. I mean, so I want to say, man, I think you're right. This could be the beginning of a conversation and maybe, because I'm an Old Testament guy and you just disparaged the Old Testament a little bit, they wrestled with pluralism all the time. 

Darrell Bock: 

Oh, absolutely. 

Danny Carroll Rodas: 

And so I think there's things to learn from the Old Testament as well to which we can engage the new. But I think maybe because the Old Testament sometimes is a bit wary of the influence of pluralism. And that's the kind of things you saw me going to. I think that might be something to consider, because pluralism is a challenge, but it also can be a danger for the things I was talking about. A fuller discussion I think would complicate the discussion, but it could bring kind a fuller, biblical reflection on it that might be, I hate to use the word, but very realistic. 

Darrell Bock: 

And hopefully beneficial at the same time. 

Danny Carroll Rodas: 

Yeah, how to do this constructively would be- 

Darrell Bock: 

Exactly right. Yeah. I love the Old Testament Danny, I just like the fact that Jeremiah is in it. 

Danny Carroll Rodas: 

I'm watching you buddy. 

Darrell Bock: 

I know, I know. Vince. 

Vincent Bacote: 

What I would say is it's important to remember that God cares about the entire world and has not given up on the world and that he has a people coming from all the peoples of the world, which means that you have a people made up of peoples coming from different cultures. And of course those cultures are ones that Christians are engaging all over the world. And some of those cultures, if you're in the United States, those cultures are coming to us. And that if our formation leads us to remember what Christian was saying about, we remember that look, God wins, he's on the throne. Circumstances change, kingdoms rise, kingdoms fall. And our hope isn't in the United States going on forever and ever, but God's kingdom going on forever and ever. 

And God caring about the world, the people, the different kinds of people. And if we can be formed to have that kind of care, that kind of love, while saying, "I want to be a person of conviction. I want those convictions to walk around with me, to be displayed in the world. But I also want to do that in a way where it's very clear that as far as it is with me, you do no harm to neighbors. You seek good of neighbors even if they don't necessarily agree with what you think good is, but that you are so disposed toward them and they're good, that even if they disagree with you, they can't say that you didn't really care about them. And I think we've got a great opportunity for that witness, but that requires a weaning of a kind of triumphalistic expectation because you're a Christian in the United States. 

Darrell Bock: 

Well, on that note, I will say thank you for helping us think through coping with pluralism and the variety of things that got us started in a conversation. This probably is a part one of some sort because it's clear that some of the things we discussed, and we put other things on the table that we need to discuss. But I do think the challenge of being distinct in a world that doesn't get the church is with us. It's with all of us. 

And how we handle the challenge of the gospel that is a part of the gospel, that we need God and all of us fall short. With the invitation of the gospel, but God cares enough that he gave of himself so that you might be connected to him, and that we're supposed to imitate that kind of character. Putting those two things together as a way of thinking about how we engage, what the tone is that we bring to our engagement can help the church be the church with an appreciation that God has made us with a variety. There is a pluralism in the church that was designed by God that wants to be connected to God and flourishes best when it is connected to God. And that's what we're hoping for and driving for. So thank you all for helping us with this conversation. I really appreciate it. Kristen, Danny, Vince, thank you all very, very much. 

Vincent Bacote: 

Thank you. 

Danny Carroll Rodas: 

Thank you. 

Darrell Bock: 

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