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Support for on being with Krista Tippett comes from the Fetzer Institute, helping build the spiritual foundation for a loving world, Fetzer envisions a world that embraces love as a guiding principle and animating force for our lives, a powerful love that helps us live in sacred relationship with ourselves, others and the natural world. Learn more by visiting Fetzer, dawg. We're in a tender spiritual moment as a country, widely feeling our need for grounding and healing both alone and together, but calls for social repair and unity are also meeting an understandable wariness.

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The last years have been bruising all around. So, of course, I leapt at an invitation to be in a forward looking conversation with two religious thinkers and spiritual leaders from very different places on our Christian and cultural spectrum. Michael Curry, the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church of the U.S., together with Russell Moore, the president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, essentially the chief ethicist of the Southern Baptist Convention. I drew them out to speak in their vocabularies of faith, understanding this as an exercise in public theology.

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How might convictions about God and the universe about love? And a question like who is my neighbor? How might these be offerings from the vast human enterprise that is theology in service to our common life at a turning point like this? As much as what these two say and they differ on much, they model in their presence and their friendship to each other.

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Some of the way forward, I think that we have put more weight upon these political identities than they can bear. We have sort of a vacuum in American life, particularly of meaning and of connection.

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What I believe ultimately is is answered in the gospel. And so some of these questions have become ultimate in ways that aren't just about let's talk about what we disagree about and how do we go from here, but who's stupid and evil and who's not?

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And that really just completely cuts off the conversation. Are there stupid people and evil people? Yes, sometimes there's a combination of the two, but every conversation ultimately becomes that the Good Samaritan, if you run the risk of translating it, change the characters to today.

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And I like to say we might want to retranslate the parable into the parable of the good Democrat. And it's a Republican on the side of the road or the parable of the good Republican. And as a Democrat, you see, what I'm getting at my point is Jesus is flipping it. Who is neighbor? You see who is neighbor to the one who has hurt and wounded.

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I'm Krista Tippett and this is On Being. This conversation was convened by the Washington National Cathedral and the National Institute for Civil Discourse. It happened over Zoome as we convene in this year of our Lord 20-20, with thousands of people watching and submitting questions in advance, which I wove throughout the hour.

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I want to begin briefly by meeting each of you as human beings and getting a sense of the grounding and the history behind your vocation, Bishop Curry. I know that you grew up a, as they say, a cradle Episcopalian.

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Your father was an Episcopal priest, although in Buffalo, New York, although you also had a Baptist side of your family in North Carolina, I wonder if you would describe something that is at the heart of of Episcopal and Anglican tradition that has formed you and is forming your presence now to the life of our country and our world.

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You know, I mean, it's it's really interesting. One wouldn't expect that growing up as a black kid and the Episcopal tradition, the Anglican way, would actually have a crossover. But they do. As a kid growing up, I remember my grandmother and Lillian in particular would often say on different occasions, for different reasons, never let any man drag you so low as to hate him. Now, I didn't know as a kid they were actually and I'm not sure they knew either.

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They were actually quoting Booker T. Washington, who said that? But I grew up in a context where people really did believe that the kind of love that Jesus of Nazareth taught is the kind of love that can change personal life and social life. They really did believe that. And it was just ingrained in me. Well, that's deeply rooted in the Anglican or Episcopal way of Christianity that that the love of God is the motive for everything God does. I mean, God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.

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I mean, it's just all over the place that's not unique to Anglicanism or Episcopalians, but it's deeply rooted in there. And so both my growing up as a black kid and as an Episcopalian way of being Christian centered on the way of love as the key to life itself.

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Hmm. Dr. Moore, I think it's right that you are a Mississippian, born and bred. Yes. Did you also grow up Southern Baptist? Is this the church of your childhood?

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It is. I grew up in a family that was half Southern Baptist, half Roman Catholic. My father had my grandfather had been the pastor of the Southern Baptist Church to which I was born into and belong to all of my life.

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Well, having grown up in Oklahoma, Southern Baptists, I know that what you just said was a very big deal.

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And that was a divide that was a chasm a few decades ago. So, yeah, I wonder if you would describe something that has formed you in Southern Baptist tradition and is forming your presence now to our public life?

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Well, I would say and it's probably of no surprise as an evangelical Christian, that that would be the gospel, which is the understanding of good news, that God has presented a way of redemption to the world through Jesus Christ. So that changes the way that I see myself as a sinner in need of reconciliation that came through the cross and resurrection, but also how I see other people, which is as those who are created in the image of God and not ultimately my opponents, we wrestle not against flesh and blood, the apostle Paul said, but against principalities and powers in the heavenly places.

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So that view of reality, I think, is is what changes and shapes my way of seeing everything.

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And you said to me as we corresponded a little bit before today that your concern for a more civil public square is not in spite of your evangelicalism, but because of it.

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And you noted your concern about how vulnerable so many of us, all of us seem to have become to the falsey. These are your words to the false idea that one's public denunciation of one's opponents is indicative of the depth of one's own convictions, whether to the gospel or to social justice or to family values or whatever.

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Yes, yes. And I hate the word civility largely, although I will take it. I understand. I understand what people mean by it, but I think it's too low of a bar. I think what the scripture calls us to is to both conviction, not evaporating of our our differences, but also to kindness and active love for even those people who disagree with us completely. So I think sometimes when we say civility, what we mean is pretending as though we don't have differences and being polite.

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And of course, I grew up in a in a kind of southern context where one could be brutal with with a very strategically worded politeness in a way that they could word things that could just dismiss the other person. I think we need to have more debate, not not less.

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And so as someone who really does believe that the scriptures are authoritative, I really do believe that I'm going to stand at the judgment seat of Christ and give an account for my entire life, including the way that I related to people that I may prefer to pretend or invisible at the moment, but are not invisible to God. I think that's an important thing for all of us to keep in mind.

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Bishop Curry, something you said to me, wrote to me is that you said, Deep in my soul, I believe that E Pluribus Unum is not simply a quaint Latin saying, but a moral and spiritual imperative for the life of the human family. You said learning to live together as brothers, sisters and siblings means learning to live together with God given and social diversity and with real and profound differences. So very much speaking the same language as Dr. Moore in that sense.

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You know, Dr. King said, we will either learn to live together as brothers and sisters or we will perish together as fools. And he was right. E Pluribus Unum is the motto, if you will, of the United States from many. One is a vision of this country, and it's what it could be. But it's bigger than that. It's part of God's vision of the entire human family learning to live together in love and charity with all of our differences, holding on to our integrities and yet being able to be in relationship with each other as children of God made in God's image and likeness who have differences in variety.

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I've been married to my wife 40 years, and good Lord, we don't agree on a whole lot. Don't tell her. I don't doubt that. But it's true. We don't agree. And she's always right, of course. But the truth is, learning to live in relationship with difference is called maturity.

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The human race must move toward maturity, what we call maturity and grace. As Paul says in Ephesians, I believe that rising up to spiritual maturity, that makes it like the old slaves used to say, where there's plenty good room, plenty good room for all God's children.

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Yeah, I love that. I, I think it's interesting when when one speaks of love in the public square, there's a sense that they are talking about something soft. But in fact what we know about how love works in our real lives, it's the hardest thing of all. And it's very much about learning to disagree and staying in relationship.

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I think one of the things that came through so clearly in the comments and questions that came in from this incredible spectrum of humanity that is with us by this miracle of technology, and this won't surprise you that I'm going to name it, because I think we have to name where we are, where we are. We need to keep naming this pain and confusion and fear that is among us, even people who want to move beyond it.

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So, you know, I think all of what it boils down to, there's so much that comes together to me and the question of how can we now proceed with common life or something like healing in the absence of what feels like any common ground to stand on. So people have said, you know, we can't even agree on facts. How can we converse?

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How can I be in relationship with people who have been demeaning to me or threatening to me or to what I'm about? In the last year or two, someone said, we know there's hard work ahead. But to be honest, I'm unclear how I can help.

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In my Munib municipality, in my church, most of us voted the same way. How can we discern what is ours to do? Another person wrote, Why would I put myself potentially in harm's way? For example, engaging with someone whose views tell them to deny my personhood or that my pain isn't real.

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So I'd really love for you both pastorally as much as theologically to respond to.

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To the reality of how we're feeling as a country right now, which one of us would you like to start with, Christopher? You start OK?

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I think we actually do have some common ground that often we choose not to see. And some of that has to do with the fact that there's something involved in human nature that wants to be self protective. I think I mentioned to you before we came on today about Eugene Peterson, someone we both admired, talking about an exoskeleton that we tend to put around ourselves. And I think that's that's just true of all in human nature. And one of the ways we can get around that is to try to find a small area of common agreement and then work out from there to our disagreements.

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And so finding those areas where we actually do see things the same way. I think if, for instance, the way that Jesus often is using parables to go around people's defenses, to get at the heart of what it is he is saying to them or the prophet Nathan with King David, who comes in and goes around that self protective sort of conscience in order to talk about a man with a Ulam that's been taken from them by by someone wealthier.

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I think we can find those places and then move forward as human beings who disagree, including about some really important and significant things and are willing to have those conversations without suggesting that every point of disagreement is is necessarily weaponized.

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I sometimes wonder if we could, even in the absence of knowing whether we share any answers or any convictions, if we could just get gather around some questions we have in common or gather around the love we have for our children in common, yes, we got a lot in common.

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I mean, we really do. First of all, we all inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide.

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We have a lot in common. We happen to inhabit the same planet you caught us. We all bleed. I mean, the reality, there's a lot in common. I met a priest out in Utah a couple of years ago who after the 2016 election, brought together people in the town where he lives red and blue and brought them together not to debate issues. Although they engaged issues, he invited them and he had a design for it, invited folk to engage the issue, not from trying to convince the other, but tell us the story of your life that brought you to the conclusion that you happen to hold that shifts.

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That creates common ground because everybody does a story. My daddy used to say don't judge a book by its cover. Read the book because there's a story there and that story becomes some common ground. I mean, a friend of mine said one of the reasons God told Moses to take off his shoes in Exodus three, he said, because God was about to tell Moses his story. And whenever someone reveals the story of their life, that ground on which they're standing is holy ground.

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That's the common ground. We're human and we've got a story. And if I listen to yours and you to mine, we won't agree on a whole lot, but we'll understand each other. And that's common. Produces common ground.

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I'm Krista Tippett and this is On Being. Today with Bishop Michael Currie of the Episcopal Church and Dr. Russell Moore from the Southern Baptist Convention.

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You know, something else I feel has not been named enough, loudly enough and put out for us to grieve and an approach is.

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The way we looked at the maps of our country on election night, there's, you know, some things get colored and red and blue or there are red states and blue states, but it's a picture of fracture and it's also a picture of interwoven a..

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Right. These these divisions, they don't just run state to state or county to county. They run community to community. They run neighborhood to neighborhood, sometimes house to house. They run through our families. They run through our lives and they run through our religious traditions, which our gatherings of human beings and therefore microcosm.

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So each of you has been a bridge person as your traditions have grappled with divisions and what feels like irreconcilable differences that are also alive in our culture.

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And I I'd love to draw you out a little bit on what that takes and you know what you've learned, what you can share about what it means to reframe and set these divides on different ground with the help of religious values.

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So, Bishop Curry, you have been right in the middle of a very vitriolic divisions within the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion globally over same sex marriage. And you have also been in very public conversations that I would say are marked by friendship and respect with, for example, bishops on the other side of this subject. You know, here's something you you said in one of those dialogues, the inclusion that is at the heart of the gospel that welcomes gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people is the same inclusive, outstretched arms of Jesus that welcomes those who disagree with us.

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You know, if you just take us a little bit insight that what you've learned that that that we can all learn from. You know, I mean, well, it goes back for me to the Ten Commandments, I'm the Lord that God thou shalt have no other God but me, God only God is God. None of the rest of us are. Which may come as news in some respect, but it's a great relief. I'm not God I don't have to pretend to be.

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And therefore, humility is a posture that comes with my humanity. And I one of the things I've really and I struggle with it, it's not easy to do.

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This is how do I stand and kneel at the same time in my relationships with others, especially with those who disagree with me or I disagree with them because I've got to kneel before them as someone created in the image of God, a child of God, just like me, loved of God. Equally, love is an equal opportunity employer and the love of God is equal. So I've got to kneel before them in a sense. I mean. And yet at the same time, I must stand with the integrity.

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And what I've found is there are times when that is reciprocated. When I was at one of the conferences of the Anglican Primate, the archbishops and presiding bishop from around the world, and this was a very difficult one, one of the primates who differed with me profoundly. The two of us got close, in part because he had been a physician in a prior life, and I had just recently had brain surgery.

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And each day he checked in with me. Michael, how are you doing? I said, I'm doing all right. And I check back with him. And we committed to pray for each other. Not the way some folks say, I'll pray for you. That's not a blessing. That doesn't mean about the past. But to really pray for you, people can do.

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Now, I know everybody can't do that, but most people can. There's there's there's more good. And in most of us. And we can.

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Yeah. Yeah. We're not all called to be bridge people, but some of us are. Some of us are safe enough. Ah yeah. Doctor Moore.

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So I just I want to say a little bit about your role because I think everybody understands, mostly understands what a bishop is. But you are really the chief ethicist of the Southern Baptist Convention.

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You're part of kind of the think tank. You attend to the difficult questions in the public square and inside the faith. And the Southern Baptist Church is the largest Protestant denomination in the United States. Over 14 million members, almost 50000 churches, but also very differently from, for example, the Episcopal Church. Right. Those are all independent churches.

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Yes. Right. Yes. So to be chief ethicist of that kind of configuration is challenging. And so, you know, when to say that you've been a bridge person in that context and you really have been a bridge person, especially in recent years in the Southern Baptist Convention's grappling with race.

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And it's in its history and its present ought to read something that you said at the 2017 annual convention, which is the only time in the year when the whole Southern Baptist Church comes together. You said when we stand together as a convention and speak clearly, we are saying that white supremacy and racist ideologies are dangerous because they oppress our brothers and sisters in Christ. They oppress those who are made in the vision of God. They oppress our mission field. Even above and beyond that, unrepentant racism is not just wrong.

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Unrepentant racism sins, unrepentant, racist to hell.

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So the resolution you were you were arguing for was initially rejected, but it went on to overwhelmingly, nearly unanimously pass.

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You have said that in your younger days you were all too eager to fight like the devil to please the Lord.

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Yes, but yeah, talk to us, because what you did there is you made an argument. But it was an argument embedded in the faith. Yes, and I think that's I think that's what's important is to have consciences that really are shaped by one's convictions and then to live those out as best as possible consistently. And that means if we really do believe that there is a day of judgment, then we have to speak honestly about that. If we really do believe that all human beings are created in the image of God, then any suggestion that that's not true is is an assault on the authority of scripture.

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That doesn't mean, though, that we we have to, again, evaporate arguments. I mean, Bishop Bishop Curry and I would disagree very fundamentally on some of these questions that you just mentioned about sexuality. We probably couldn't serve together well. We couldn't serve together in the same congregation or a church. That doesn't mean that we have to see one another as as enemies to be evaporated. Rather, we can have what could be very strong disagreements and arguments, but still listen to one another in the public arena.

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So I think there's a distinction between there are certain things that a church in carrying out its mission that we have to agree on. We have to be on the on the same page on certain things in a way that we don't expect those on the outside to necessarily understand or to agree with us about.

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Bishop Curry told the story about coming together with his friend Bishop on the other side. I hate the way we write. It's so binary on the other side of the issue. That's also a political form, an issue.

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But through this matter of health and you have a wonderful story about a friendship with someone who's part of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, which is actually a group that split away from the Southern Baptist Convention in part around some of these social issues. And you came together around a shared love of Wendell Berry's poetry.

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Yes. A pastor who is completely different than I am theologically and probably politically. We both we both were really affected by Wendell Berry and started getting together to have coffee once a month. He used to joke Will, we'll swap back and forth and we'll be at the organic coffee place one time at a Chick fil A the next, so that we're each on our home turf.

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But we would be able to have have good conversations that really did get at the hearts of our disagreements. And we would talk through our disagreements. But neither of us had an audience of our own tribe to which we were playing.

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I genuinely wanted to know, why do you think the things that you do? And here's why. I believe the things that I believe. And he did the same. We didn't we didn't convince one another of very many things, if anything. But we came to understand each other as as human beings and to build a friendship that way and one that that I greatly valued.

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How did you discover that? Shared love of Wendell? Various poetry.

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I think he's the one who initiated this because he had he had seen some things that I had written on Wendell Berry and then talked to and we both had had known Mr. Berry and had some connections with him personally. And so that's that's kind of how it came together.

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Yeah, it's a great model.

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After a short break, more with Dr. Russell Moore and Bishop Michael Currie. You can always listen again and hear the unedited version of every show we do on the On Being podcast feed. You can also watch and share this conversation by video. It's worth it to see these two very different leaders enjoying each other and modeling what they preach. Find that at the On Being project on YouTube. On being is brought to you by the John Templeton Foundation, harnessing the power of the sciences to explore the deepest and most perplexing questions facing humankind, learn about the latest discoveries in the study of forgiveness, generosity and freewill at Templeton Doug.

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I'm Krista Tippett and this is On Being today in a faithful, forward looking conversation with Bishop Michael Currie and Dr. Russell Moore, leading spiritual thinkers and figures in the Episcopal Church and the Southern Baptist Convention, the Washington National Cathedral and the National Institute for Civil Discourse brought them together with thousands of people watching via the omnipresent force of Zoome. I wove questions from that very broad audience throughout this hour together. These are three questions to me, they they work together and I think they speak about what can public theology be for this time?

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One person says, as a Christian on the biblical left, I am caught between the desire to bridge the gap with my kin and the Christian right and the mandate to stand in solidarity with folks on the margins and are more than human can who I see being harmed.

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Can you give some wisdom on how to live and act in the tension of these mandates? A second voice I had difficulty registering. They meant registering for this event because I was asked to characterize my political leanings on a left to right scale. I understand why you do this, but it seems to me that one way Christians can contribute to national healing is by encouraging us not to think of our positions in binary terms that have now turned into tribal identities.

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And a third voice. One of the takeaways from this election highlighted by some pundits, is that many Americans subscribe to the politics of rage and blame. This is true of many on the left and the right. I seem to recall that many a biblical writer also struggled with the question of who is at fault for my despair. How do we, as humans and as people of faith, present a counter narrative to this notion while maintaining compassion for the anger and despair?

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I think those are excellent questions that are not to answer, but I would love to know where they land you and how you would respond to them.

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Well, I think that we have put more weight upon these tribal and especially political identities than they can bear because we have sort of a vacuum in American life, particularly of meaning and of connection that what I believe ultimately is answered in the gospel in a way that something has to take that place. And so some of these questions have become ultimate in in ways that aren't just about let's talk about what we disagree about and how do we go from here, but who's stupid and evil and who's not?

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And that really just completely cuts off the conversation. Are there stupid people and evil people? Yes, sometimes there's a combination of the two, but every conversation ultimately becomes that. And it's sort of I think about the pastors that I know who are exhausted right now in this time of covid, because every single conversation ends up being in their communities. Some social media war about masks or not masks or whether or not what social distancing ought to look like, because it becomes not just do we think this is the best way to go, but who are we?

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Those sorts of conversations, I think, are ultimately exhausting to everyone involved. And I think the end result of it is not a heightened conviction on either side. It's cynicism. It's the belief that ultimately nothing matters except for screaming into the void. That's a dangerous place to be as a society.

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Mm hmm. Yeah. You know, the struggles that I hear behind the questions and the comments are the struggle, I mean, that we all have. But what kind of person do I want to be, you know, preaches used to say when I was growing up, you know, you look on headstones and graveyards and cemeteries and you see the name of the person and you see the year and date they were born. And then a little dash in the year and date that they died.

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And the old preachers used to say, the question is now, when were you born? You don't have anything to do with that. When did you die? You probably didn't have much to do with that either. The question is, what did you do with your dash?

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That's the question. And and when I start there, what I do with my dash, what is the living legacy? I want to leave. What is what do I want to do with this life? Then I've got to ask myself the question, who am I going to follow? What way am I going to follow and live to live this life? I believe that the way of Jesus is a challenge. It's not easy. It is about taking up a cross and following.

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It is about giving self for the greater good. It is about unselfish, sacrificial love becoming the way of life. Just like Jesus who didn't sacrifice his life on the cross for anything he could get out of it. He didn't do it to get famous. He didn't do it to make money because he clearly didn't make any money. He didn't do it for that. He did it for the good and the well being in the salvation and the hope and the liberation of others.

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That's what love looks like. And if I want my dash on my headstone to say he may have made a lot of mistakes, but doggone it, he tried to live a life of love. That's what now, if you want to do that, then then that's going to be a struggle. That's not going to be easy. You don't believe me as Saint Paul, as Peter, as Mary Magdalene.

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I mean, they weren't the happiest group of fisherfolk, whoever came around, you know? I mean, when you really look at the Bible carefully, they were the most disgruntled. Peter and Paul went at it. Look at Galatians. They went at it. Peter called Paul out. I mean, Paul called Peter out. I mean, that's OK. But they figured out by following this Jesus by following his way of love, they actually found a way to live together in ways that they might not otherwise.

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I think that's true for us. Those who were on the left who stand for justice and stand for righteousness. I remind my friends, you know what, I agree with you, but justice by itself is not enough justice without mercy. Read, Michael. Justice without love can turn into revenge. And that is not the way of God. That is not the social change we want. That is not something that reflects the kingdom, the reign of God, the beloved community that God dreams for us all.

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So I you know, I like that song. This has set me upon a rock that is higher than I call me. It is something better than Michael's lowest self. Call me to my highest self and then help me learn how to rise.

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Would you offer up that saying from Micah, the prophet Micah for everyone who doesn't know it? Oh, the teaching.

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What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. And if we live in God and live in love, we will find ourselves in relationship with God and with each other. I have noticed that both of you, each of you has used the biblical story of the Samaritan, as you have commented on images, teaching stories to work with relevance to how we live together.

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And I just love to hear each of you speak a little bit about about that story as as something for our life together now.

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Well, I'm always drawn to what Frederick Bikaner said about the way that we tend to want to go to parables as things that we can just squeeze out, like juice from an orange and toss aside the rain. But what Jesus is doing with the parables is engaging the person at every level, not just here's the moral of the story. Take this and go with it. But here's how to engage the mind, the imagination, the conscience, the will, and to put people into surprising situations.

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And I think that's what Jesus parable of the what we call the Good Samaritan actually is. He takes these assumptions that this this lawyer, teacher of the law held and said, you actually don't believe what it is that you say you believe by putting him into this uncomfortable situation. And I think that's true. This is not just telling us you ought to be better people. It is speaking to us as sinners and saying you're in need of redemption and then saying this is what this looks like to to follow Christ and to see those people who are invisible to you.

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You know, the parables of Jesus really are multifaceted. I mean, they can hit you at different times in your life and on your journey from a different angle. And of late, I'm very aware that the Good Samaritan, if you run the risk of translating it to today, change the characters today.

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So who's the Samaritan? Who's the person beating up on the side of the road? And it's clear and who is therefore neighbor to whoever it is beating up on the side of the road? And I like to say we might want to retranslate the parable into the parable of the good Democrat.

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And it's a Republican on the side of the road or the parable of the good Republican.

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And it's a Democrat, you see, and getting into the parable of the Black Lives Matter in a police officer on the side of the road, or the parable of a Black Lives Matter person and a police officer is the Good Samaritan.

[00:35:49]

My point is Jesus is flipping it. Who is neighbor? You see, who is neighbor to the one who has hurt and wounded.

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And, you know, he's he was showing that whatever the lawyer had in mind when he said that, because he asked me what do I have to do to inherit eternal life? That's what he was asking him, what do I do with my dash? And and and Jesus said, the question is, who are you, neighbor to brother? Who are you neighbor to?

[00:36:15]

That's what love of neighbor looks like. And I wonder if Jesus was saying is life is meant to be lived following his way as a Samaritan, as a good Samaritan. And if that begins to happen, imagine what a different society would have imagined, what our political debate would be mad. We'd have some civil discourse.

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Yeah, we disagree, but we'd pick each other up when we got to pick each other up and pour oil on our wounds and care for each other and figure out how are we going to do this together. We got to live together.

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You know, Shirley Chisholm said a long time ago, she said, you know, outside of the indigenous people, the First Nations people of the land, we all came over here on different ships. But we're all in the same boat now. And we are. And we might as well figure out how can we live together so that we all thrive, how can we do it? And we can. Dr. Moore, just do you want to add anything to that?

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Well, I think that one of the things that strikes me in the parable of the Good Samaritan is the way that the the teacher in the law starts to try to justify himself.

[00:37:26]

I mean, just tell the story. Just because I feel I really we're talking about is though everybody knows the story. Yeah.

[00:37:33]

There was a really learned teacher of the law who asked, Jesus, what must I do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus essentially says, well, what do you think? And he said, you should love God and love nature itself. That that sums up the commandments. And Jesus says yes, but wanting to justify himself, he said, Who is my neighbor?

[00:37:53]

What are the asterisks that I can put in here to exempt myself? And Jesus exposes all of this with this story of a man who's beaten on the side of the road and one religious leader after the other passes by. But the one who stops is a Samaritan who would have been a despised figure at the time. He's the one who showed mercy to him and said, who was the neighbor to this man beaten, not who is his neighbor, but who was he, a neighbor to this active sense of love and turned everything on its head.

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And I find that that that intuition of wanting to say, how am I exempted from these responsibilities is one that at least I grapple with often. I remember the preaching through Blessed are the merciful, for they shall be shown mercy and finding myself trying to find some exemptions to that in terms of people that I wanted to be angry at at the moment.

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And I said, you know, what I'm doing here is exactly what I critique in theological liberalism when I do, which is the idea? Well, it says resurrection of the dead, but it can't mean that I don't I'm somebody who who knows that's not the way that it is to be. But I find myself doing the same thing when it comes to what Jesus commanding me to do. I'm a sinner. And so one of the things that I've started doing since then is to say with every text of scripture that I come across, if I'm a sinner, then that means that there's going to be something in me that will try to resist the truth of what God is saying.

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Where is it? And if I don't know of anything, it's probably because not. It's probably because I'm perfectly holy and sanctified. It's probably because that's something that I've hidden from myself and really needs to be explored to say, how do I confront that in myself and turn it over for transformation. I'm Krista Tippett and this is On Being Today with Dr Russell Moore from the Southern Baptist Convention and Bishop Michael Currie of the Episcopal Church.

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I want to bring for one last time a voice from our virtual space question was, what might it look like for the church to become a prophetic witness, address brokenness of our nation and world.

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And I think we've been that we've been delving into that, but this really follows on that how do we hold our own traditions accountable for honoring that teaching? And what do each of you look for from the other traditions to help in this work?

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Well, I would start, you know, I'd kind of go back to Michae, you know, what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

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There is in the Christian and the Jewish traditions, a fundamental conviction that God cares about, like the old song says, his eyes on the sparrow.

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And I know he watches that, that God is passionately concerned about the well-being of his children and that all that stuff in Matthew 25 and the parable of the last judgment, the sheep and the goats where God is concerned about did you feed me when I was hungry? Did you clothe me when I was naked? Did you visit me when I was in prison? In other words, did you show me justice and mercy and kindness? Did you help me in my humanity when I needed help?

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That that's what Judgment Day is about. I mean, Jesus, a parable about Judgment Day, which I think is a way of talking about what matters to God. What matters to God is how have we treated each other, because that's a reflection of what we really think about God. How did we care for each other?

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How do we care for this world, this creation that we live in? That's what matters. And so to be concerned about children being separated from their parents at the border of our country, to be concerned about finding ways that we can come together to be a better nation and and finding ways that we will make sure that that the poorest among us are cared for, that our children that every child born into this country has an opportunity to become all that God dreams and intends for the Christians can come to agreement, not just Christian, but people of religious faith can come to some agreement and say, we care about those who often don't have voices to speak for themselves and will join hands.

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I mean, tomorrow night we have actually done work together. Our organizations have done work together around common concerns that were humanitarian concerns that come out of our faith.

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We didn't do it just because we're social do gooders. We did it because Jesus.

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Well, you don't want me to preach, but you know what I'm saying?

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I mean, we do want you to preach, but we don't have to. We don't have time. No.

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Oh, well, but to the point you just made, you know, something I'm aware of as somebody in media is there's so much of the story of our time and the generative story of our time is just not told.

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A light is not shining on it.

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So to your point, I mean and I don't think people know how many what would feel like counter-intuitive collaboration's there are on matters like immigration and criminal justice reform and ecology that are happening between the Southern Baptist Convention and and Episcopalians and other faiths.

[00:43:48]

Yes.

[00:43:49]

And I think that only can happen when we have groups that will say we might not agree on anything else except this. And so we can argue about a thousand other things when we're on our way to work together on this one thing. But we can agree on that one thing. And sometimes what we find is that we have more agreement than we thought. Sometimes we find the way of more disagreement than we thought. But it's only by being in that kind of conversation with one another.

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I can't speak for anyone else's community. I can only speak for for mine. And what I hope for is a long term view of life.

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And by long term, I mean trillions of years, which is to say, as a people who really do believe in a heaven and hell and resurrection from the dead, to see that life, life is not just the scarcity of trying to grab on to whatever my career is or whatever my reputation is at the moment. And I think there are some people who would caricature that as well. If you believe in a life to come, then that means that you just don't pay attention to what's going on around you right now.

[00:44:56]

I find the reverse is true. You're able to pay attention and to care about the life that you have now, because it's not ultimate, because I can pour myself out and risk myself in love for others and in conviction to the truth without believing that this is all there is. I think that's what I pray and hope for, for my own community.

[00:45:17]

Hmm. Hmm, hmm. We had exactly four minutes left. And what I want to ask you as we finish is how the young inside each of your denominations is questioning and pushing as the young are wont to do to make good trouble, as John Lewis said.

[00:45:35]

Are there conversations that they're driving forward or priorities that they're kind of bringing front and centre that that might not have been there before?

[00:45:43]

Yes, and but where those conversations are coming is not from a desire. I think some people think of the young as looking for ways to to set what I find are rather than that young people who are looking for more consistency.

[00:46:00]

The question is not why do you believe so much? The question is why are you not living up to what you say you believe? And I think it's. When we've seen so many high profile failures in every institution, but also within the church, that's a that's a very good question. And I know that as someone who went through a spiritual crisis of my own at the age of 15 of wondering, is Christianity just another marketing gimmick? And came to the understanding, no, I think this is the way the truth and the life that that call for consistency and integrity.

[00:46:36]

That's what I see coming from our young bishop.

[00:46:39]

Curry, you get the last word. Oh, my gosh. Well, you know, in a similar vein, maybe from a different set of young people, but some similarities and maybe some of the same when when I saw young people and it was mostly young people this summer after the killing of George Floyd marching peacefully and they were marching peacefully, I realized something over time.

[00:47:07]

First of all, it was the most diverse gathering I have ever seen in the civil rights movement, wasn't that diverse. And even after Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin in the back going way back, the marches weren't that.

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This was a diverse group of young people.

[00:47:24]

And more than that, I realized something. What they were protesting was our failure to live up to the ideals and the values that we say constitute what America is really about. They were protesting that we would live if they were doing what Thomas Jefferson, if you will, and we're doing in the Declaration of Independence, we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. They were protesting that America live up to the values you say you are.

[00:47:53]

Christians live up to the values you say you hold religious folk live up to the values. They were challenging us. Now, that's prophetic witness challenging us to be who we say we are.

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And I hear young people calling the church and calling religious communities. You say your people of God and you say that God is love. Show me like it says in my fair lady, don't talk of love.

[00:48:18]

Show me. The most Reverend Michael Curry is presiding bishop and primate of the Episcopal Church of the United States. He is the author of Love is the Way Holding On to Hope and Troubling Times. Dr. Russell Moore is president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. He is the author of The Courage to Stand Facing Your Fear Without Losing Your Soul. Special thanks.

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This week to Keith Allred, Cheryl Graves, Theo Brown, the very Reverend Randy Hollerith, Michelle Dibley, Margaret Rawls, Leonard Hamlin and Alan Yarbro.

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The NBN project is Chris Heagle, Lily Percy, Lauren Nordahl, Erin Kosaka, Eddie Gonzalez, Julian Roe, Lucas Johnson, Suzette Bearly Zagros, Colleen Sheck, Cristian Wartell, Julie Siple, Gretchen Honold, Gilles Akhavan, Padrino Tumor, Benkert Gotham Sition and Lily Benowitz.

[00:49:34]

Beyond Being Project is located on DeCota land. Our lovely theme music is provided and composed by Zoe Keating. And the last voice that you hear singing at the end of our show is Cameron Kinghorn on being as an independent non-profit production of the On Being Project. It is distributed to public radio stations by WNYC Studios. I created the show at American Public Media. Are funding partners include the Fetzer Institute helping to build the Spiritual Foundation for a Loving World. Find them at Fetzer Dawg Calliope, a foundation dedicated to reconnecting ecology, culture and spirituality, supporting organizations and initiatives that uphold a sacred relationship with life on Earth.

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Learn more at Calliope Dog Humanity United Advancing Human Dignity at home and around the world. Find out more about humanity.

[00:50:31]

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