Lee
[00:00:00] I am Lee C. Camp and this is No Small Endeavor - exploring what it means to live a good life.
Tish
We're gonna have different notions of good, we really are, but there is need to be really robustly represented.
Lee
That's Tish Harrison Warren, Anglican priest and opinion writer for the New York Times. Our conversation today examines the complexity of articulating one's convictions in a pluralistic world. Against the prevailing tendency to reduce people and issues to polarized binary categories, Tish, who does theology in public, has found that the work requires a serious commitment to nuance and understanding.
Tish
If we are able to kind of talk about things, we're able to hash things out, more good will come from that, like, more flourishing in our communities.
Lee
This, plus Tish on her book, The Liturgy of the Ordinary, all coming right up.[00:01:00]
I'm Lee C. Camp. This is No Small Endeavor - exploring what it means to live a good life.
If you are new to No Small Endeavor, you may not know that our history as an organization precedes our podcast and public radio show. We began as a live variety show here in Nashville, a mashup of outstanding musicians, world-class vocalists, bestselling authors, and top-of-their-game intellectuals, few comedy sketches thrown in here and there, bringing together folks from all walks of life and all manner of convictions to explore some question or topic that was of mutual interest.
It's super fun, and by the way, we still have our shows and we'd be delighted if you would come join. But one of the taglines we often used with regard to our live shows was, 'breaking down false dichotomies.'
That is, we made it plain that conventional wisdom often gives us either/or [00:02:00] choices, binary choices. It's either this or that, but not both. But many of these either/or dichotomies are false. That is, many times it really can be both/and rather than either/or. Our seeking to break down false dichotomies is a way we seek to challenge the too easy dismissal of the convictions, insights, or consideration of others by simply cataloging them as representatives of the unacceptable pole of the dichotomy.
Our guest today, Tish Harrison Warren, is an example of someone who pushes against that way of seeing the world, and she herself does not quite fit into the prevailing polarized binary categories of Left or Right, liberal or traditional. Tish is a Christian doing public theology, an Anglican priest, and an opinion writer for the New York Times.
Here's our conversation.
Tish Harrison Warren is a priest in the [00:03:00] Anglican Church in North America. She's the author of the award-winning book, Liturgy of the Ordinary, as well as Prayer in the Night. Currently, Tish writes a weekly newsletter for the New York Times and is also a columnist for Christianity Today. She's a founding member of The Pelican Project and a senior fellow with the Trinity Forum.
She lives with her husband and three children in the Austin, Texas area.
Welcome, Tish Warren.
Tish
Lee
It's good to, good to have you with us.
Tish
Lee
And, uh, spent several years in Nashville, uh, a number of years ago, right?
Tish
Yes, I did. I love Nashville still.
Lee
Tish
Two of my three kids were born there, so--
Lee
Tish
--special place, Vanderbilt hospital.
Lee
It is a special place. Yes.
So, I actually would like to begin with a story about your time in Nashville as a way to ask to what degree the things that surfaced in that encounter do or do not kind [00:04:00] of give us a sense of the kind of theology in public that you have continued to do in your work to this day.
Tish
Lee
Tish
Lee
So, so this, this controversy that happened at Vanderbilt when you were here in Nashville, would you just kind of share with folks kind of some of the main features of that, that controversy?
Tish
Yeah. So I was a campus minister at Vanderbilt. I worked with InterVarsity graduate and faculty ministries. And, um, so you have to turn in a constitution for your organization to get on campus status there.
And we'd used the same one forever, and it had been approved and then suddenly it was disapproved. And the change was that they instituted a policy called an "all comers" policy, which meant that every student had to be able to be in membership or leadership of any organization on campus, which meant you couldn't put any kind of, uh, prohibitions on who [00:05:00] could, who could lead your group.
So our group, like many other groups on campus, was all, everyone was welcome. Super open door, anyone could come. But to be on our, our core leadership team, which is about five students, you had to sign InterVarsity's statement of belief, which is a pretty broad statement of, of evangelical faith. And, and you had to, you had to continue to subscribe to that throughout your tenure.
So the idea was that if you were leading a Bible study or you were, like, the president of our group, we would want you to be a Christian. Say, someone like Unitarian doesn't believe in the Trinity or, or even, um, someone who might have a different-- maybe like a Jehovah's Witness or Mormon who has like a different understanding of that, would be welcome to come in our group, as would an atheist, as would anyone, but to lead, to be one of the [00:06:00] core people leading Bible studies or the whole organization, we asked people to believe certain things.
And this wasn't uncommon. You know, the Catholic group wanted their leaders to be Catholic. I should back up and say... to outsiders, this sounds like, uh, okay, this is crazy. Like why would you, why would someone who's not Catholic even try to lead a Bible study in the Catholic group, right? Uh, but, um, it happens, first of all, it does.
But also what you see a lot is, is students deconverting. Uh, like they, they, we appoint them a Bible study leader or whatever. They go study abroad or they go whatever, and then they, they come back and they, they sort of change belief or change their faith.
Happens all the time in college. Happens all the time in grad school. This is very common. And it's fine, it's fine to explore that. But then if you have radically different belief than an organization, the only way to have a theological coherence of an organization is, is [00:07:00] for you to step out of that position, and you could start your own group or join another group or whatever you wanna do.
So this could work out lots and lots of different ways. You know, if it was an anti-war group, someone couldn't, you know, suddenly take up an interest in assault weapons and still remain on their leadership team. A, uh, recycling group wouldn't have to let a climate change denier to be the, you know, front man of their group. And it goes on and on.
Well, they did this because they opposed discrimination, quote unquote discrimination. And they felt like any discrimination whatsoever was akin to what's called invidious, uh, hateful discrimination, right?
And so we protested this in all kinds of ways. We had lots of talks with administrators. We, there were [00:08:00] actual student protests about it. There was a big conversation about it on campus because my group and four other groups were put on probation, that we had to essentially drop any requirements for leaders whatsoever, any religious requirements or belief of doctrine whatsoever, or lose our on-campus status.
So it was huge controversy. It became national news. You know, Fox News came down, MSNBC came down. It became like a culture war kind of issue.
We were in the middle of it. You know, my husband was a grad student at the time. Like, he was getting his PhD at Vanderbilt. And so, I was a, a campus minister working with students who loved the university, who had given years and years of life to the university. Most of them hoped to be professors. And it was formative for us for sure.
And I still think it's just the absolute breakdown of pluralism. It's the absolute breakdown of being [00:09:00] able to have many, many different ideas around the table. I think they would say, 'no, no - the "all comers" policy is to get lots of ideas around the table.'
But the notion there is that every individual can have their individual ideas. There can't be assembly or groups or communities that have a shared ethos on campus represented. And one of the notions of freedom of speech is that it's not just giving individuals free speech, it's giving groups free speech, so that a church together, for instance, could believe something, or, like an environmental group together actually has far more influence than just lots of individual environmentalists, right?
And so, so we had a big old conversation around that on campus in all kinds of ways, because that's when I, uh, started kind of writing, was partly that. But also things like, we had town hall meetings, loads and load-- I just had endless meetings with administration folks from [00:10:00] Vanderbilt and with my students.
And at the end of that year, it was something around 1,000 to 1,500 students lost their on-campus status. So we were, we were thrown off campus. And um, that is, that's how it's continued till today.
Lee
Tish
Now the university continues in different ways. They found workarounds for that, um, where they're meeting off campus and that sort of thing. But some really basic things, like one of the ways that we would meet students every year is at this, you know, organization fair where all different organizations on campus would be. We couldn't do that anymore.
We couldn't reserve rooms on campus, at the time, anymore. We couldn't use Vanderbilt's name in any way. So it did have like a, an actual deleterious effect on the group. And, um, I think it was a loss for religious liberty, for freedom of assembly on campus.
I, I don't-- [00:11:00] to be clear, when I say freedom of assembly, like there's no constitutional violation here. Vanderbilt is a private school, it can do whatever it wants. But it's not a, a good way to do pluralism. It was essentially saying, religious groups are welcome on campus as long as they're fine with people not really believing what they say.
Lee
Tish
But if you're the type of religious group that actually has, you know, uh, requires certain dogmas or doctrines, um, then you, you're not welcome at Vanderbilt.
Lee
Yeah. You said at one point that, um, that couching the discussion as the university versus Christian students was unhelpful. And instead, you wanted to emphasize that it was much more from your perspective, a matter of whether or not we were going to take pluralism seriously--
Tish
Lee
--as a practice. And you alluded to that a moment ago, but un-- unpack that just a little bit more. How do you see [00:12:00] from a, someone who is taking a perspective of a commitment to Christian orthodoxy...
Tish
Lee
...how do you see a commitment to pluralism going hand in hand with that?
Tish
Right. Yeah. Well, I think that the, part of the reason I said that is because the narrative is too easy, because of the culture wars.
It's too simple to say, like, either, on the Right, 'the evil secular university' and the, you know, 'martyr Christian students' or the Left would be like the, you know, 'university standing against discrimination and the evil fundamentalist Christians.' You know, those are the easy things to talk about on social media. That's the easy tropes.
But the reality was different. I mean, when you took-- especially when you took the group of these, of these ten groups that were getting kicked off campus, it was some of the most racially diverse groups on campus. The students that I worked with were [00:13:00] all, literally, like the best scholars in the world. I mean, these are people getting PhDs in things like biophysics at Vanderbilt, like they're leading their fields. These are not folks that are like, deeply, you know, fundamentalists, hate the secular university.
So, uh, what, what I saw more is that the university had a very particular understanding of what inclusion was, and that was, I think, sort of unthinking embrace of the notion of just, all, all discrimination is bad, and everyone has to be accepted everywhere, no one's feelings are hurt anywhere. But what they were wanting was sort of a mushy middle, I would say a relativism.
Uh, the, the creed at Vanderbilt that you were required to sign to be on campus, whether they said it or not, it was unstated, was that it doesn't really matter [00:14:00] what you believe. We can all sort of be equal in our beliefs or whatever. But nobody actually lived that way. What I mean is that, the environmentalist group would not be okay with a climate change denier coming. They just kind of bet that wasn't gonna happen. So we felt like, we can't sign this form you're making us sign that says we will have no belief requirements for our leaders, without lying.
Lee
Tish
But we felt like, we can't teach our students, just sign a form you know isn't true to get by. I mean, I feel like we're-- if, if we care about the discipleship, we're like setting them up for future tax fraud if we say, just sign any form that makes your life better.
I've worked, uh, quite a bit in the last year with Interfaith Alliance, Eboo Patel, who's a Muslim.
Lee
Tish
Um, and we talk about this, the difference between... relativism says, you know, we're, all of [00:15:00] our religions are basically the same. I'm not trying to convert you. You're not trying to convert me. We all just sort of think this is all the same. Versus true pluralism, that says, no, no, no, we have deep differences. We have deep distinctions. Let's be honest about that. Let's be truthful about that and let, on a campus or a nation or a city, let that be robustly represented. And you come to me with who you really are and what you really think, and I'll come to you with who I really am and what I really think. But we can do that with friendship. We can do that respectfully. We can do that without shouting each other down. And we can do that in a way that allows each other to, I mean, as the cliche says, to coexist and to flourish even. And so, I just, I'm a deep, deep believer in pluralism.
I mean, I'll say as a side note, the same year, just down the road, hour away or so, I don't know, it was Murfreesboro, Tennessee. The city disallowed a mosque from being built. I don't know if you remember this controversy, and I think it went, [00:16:00] it went to a higher court. I don't know how, how far up it went. But they wouldn't allow a mosque to be built... essentially, uh, I mean, it was just anti-Muslim discrimination.
It was just that, for whatever reason, the city felt this mosque was not good for their city.
Lee
Here, Tish is referring to an episode in which the Rutherford County Regional Planning Committee approved plans for a new Islamic Center's construction there in Murfreesboro. But following that approval, there were acts of vandalism, lawsuits, bullying, and even arson from those who protested against the construction of the new center.
One group of residents took up the legal cause against the Islamic Center. Finally, after some years of the case traveling through the courts, it was finally appealed to the US Supreme Court, which denied to hear the case, thus effectively allowing the center to open.
Tish
Well, so, that is [00:17:00] discrimination from the Right, right?
There was anti-Muslim sentiment, which we, we still see. And then you had the, kind of the secular university, you know, kicking these Christian students out. I, I see that disease as the exact same. I mean, it was manifested in two different ways. One on the Right and one on the Left, but it was the same impulse, which is, we decide which groups get to be represented in this community, and which groups don't get to be represented in this community.
Lee
Tish
And I was as opposed to that, as I was to what was happening in our midst. Uh, and I think it's the same thing. I think it's exactly the same thing, really, or very near the same. And I think there's a lot of folks on the Left that would say, no, no, no, it's different. You know, as-- I just watched Annie Hall this week actually, and Woody Allen says, famously, "I'm a bigot, but for the Left, right?
And so and so
Lee
You're listening to No Small Endeavor and our conversation with Tish Harrison Warren, New York Times opinion columnist.
I love hearing from you. Tell us what you're reading, who you're paying attention to, or send us feedback about today's episode. You can reach me at lee@nosmallendeavor.com.
You can get show notes for this episode in your podcast app or wherever you listen. These notes include links to resources mentioned in the episode, as well as a PDF of my complete interview notes, as well as a transcript.
Coming up, Tish and I discussed the psychological pull of thinking that [00:19:00] in order to live a good life, you need to go somewhere else and do something extraordinary, but that the path to a good life might lie in the ordinariness of right where you are.
You at some point discuss, or someone writing about you talks about how you had done work in intentional Christian communities, been attracted to new monasticism, Dorothy Day, worked with impoverished populations in the US and abroad, and said, quote, you found yourself a 30-something with two kids, living a more or less ordinary life.
"And what I'm slowly realizing is that, for me, being in the house all day with a baby and a two-year-old is a lot more scary and a lot harder than being in a war-torn African village."
Tish
Lee
What I need courage for is the ordinary
Tish
Yeah, so just in my tw-- in my twenties especially, uh, a lot of my work was with various economically disadvantaged groups.
And so, my first job out of college was leading this local ministry with these apartments with, uh, mostly-- it was cheap apartments with almost entirely undocumented, um, immigrants. And so I saw how folks were being really exploited, um, In the sense that they were coming over here, they didn't have documentation, so they had to take basically any job they could.
Lee
Tish
So they weren't getting overtime, they weren't getting workers' comp, but they were working really, really hard, usually at [00:21:00] factories, farms, processing plants, like chicken processing plants. And so we worked with their kids a lot, uh, mostly, teaching English.
And then, worked pretty briefly with a, a group that worked with homeless teenagers and lived in community with folks there and was always sort of around...
The was-- the whole new monasticism thing, Shane Claiborne-- when I started all this, he had not come out with his first book yet, as far as I know, and I think he had not been yet featured on Christianity Today. So this was, this was kind of a new movement.
Lee
Tish
And so, I had lived in community twice, and then, you know, it never, it never like, became-- it never became a big thing, like became a, a community house or whatever, like-- but they had these, they would have these gatherings called PAPA Fest that I went to a couple of times and then, [00:22:00] um, ended up part of this, this little group in Austin that our friend Steven, who would, did urban farming with the homeless, and he was super involved in, in a lot of those conversations. And so, kind of through him, would end up going to these events.
And, and then I, I went to Africa for a while. Um, and taught English over there.
So if it sounds to you like, wow, she just bounced around and lived a bunch of places and did a lot of things, that would be accurate.
I worked at two different churches, uh, right after college and then in seminary. And both of those jobs, they were k--, they were kind of resourced churches, like middle class churches, and I was connecting them to ministry to folks around us who were homeless, who had mental illness, um, who um, almost always had poverty issues, addiction [00:23:00] issues. So, mm, a lot of what I did in that season was take, sort of middle class folks, and the needs of community, and try to like convince these middle class folks to respond to the needs of their community.
Lee
So then, going back to that quote I read a moment ago, how would you narrate then the, this kind of shift from that sort of, uh, very engaged, uh, even, even if you are bouncing around, you're, you're-- the consistent note of engaging with those on the margins, those dealing with economic deprivation, those dealing with various forms of systemic marginalization, to, uh, a life as a, as a, as a mom with two young kids.
Um--
Tish
Lee
And you know, and I wrote, I wrote in my notes, I, I wonder how many of us read Tolstoy, Dorothy Day, and the like, and then find ourselves with families and a mortgage. And then trying to narrate how, how we make sense of that sort of transition in our lives. So what did, what did that look like for you?
And then the, of course that led to, I guess, your first book in, in certain ways. [00:24:00]
Tish
Yeah, to-- Yes. It's the crisis of my life in many, many ways.
Lee
Tish
Uh, I still love Dorothy Day. I mean, I still find those people heroic. I, I love Dorothy Day. It's interesting 'cause Dorothy Day was a mom, but when you read about it, you're like... first of all, she was a mother of one. That is different. But also you go, man, this was a pretty unstable situation for her daughter to grow up in, you know, which I think her daughter would, would admit to. There's probably some--
Lee
Tish
--real beauty about that.
Lee
I think her daughter has said that publicly. Yeah.
Tish
Yeah. So, I don't know. At the time, I think I would've been like, well, I just, I sold out, you know. I, I hope that wasn't it.
I, I ended up marrying my husband, who did not want to go overseas, was getting a PhD at Vanderbilt. And we, we had children. And it's a little tongue in cheek when I say-- I mean, it's clear there was not more danger in my life than when I was in Africa. But, but there was something true about that.
Where, where, where I was in Africa was actually [00:25:00] a little dangerous. I was nine miles from Congo, and we would see sort of low range bombs, uh, exploding. And at times the, the conflicts there, which were kind of guerrilla warfare, would spill over. So there was some level of threat, you know, and there would be times where our team leadership would say, like, you just, you can't leave at night, you have to stay where you are.
But I had less anxiety. I mean, it was more fearful, but there was like less anxiety than having these, these two little kids. Granted, I understand, it was much safer. It was, it was much more privileged. And, and that's what was intriguing to me about it, is like, why? Why is it easier for me to, to trust God, to have less anxiety in these situations that, uh, clearly objectively are more terrifying or more dangerous, than in just like the warp [00:26:00] and woof of, of regular life with these kids in, in, you know, East Nashville.
And, it was because, to some extent, like, I just had no vision of what it meant to be sort of an ordinary American following Jesus. I, I just had no concept of what that, that could look like. And, and no concept of, of how God might actually meet me in that. And so, so I always sort of fantasized about these situations, other situations I could be in where God would really meet me.
But never in my actual life. I mean, it didn't make-- I wasn't sure how to encounter God in my, in the life that was, I was actually living. The life that was before me.
And so, so I wrote that piece, 'Courage in the Ordinary,' long, long time ago. This is one of the very first pieces I ever wrote as a writer. So [00:27:00] it's a billion years ago that it came out, now. It was over ten that I wrote it, for sure.
But I think I was just really intrigued of like, why do I have more anxiety in my daily life in ordinary America, which is really wrapped around with privilege, than I have had in these kind of riskier situations before.
Lee
So then, for, for those who are unfamiliar with what it might mean to have a liturgy of the ordinary, can you make kind of a brief case for that and what that has meant for you?
Tish
Well, I would say you should read the book, first of all.
Lee
Tish
It's my briefest case, is read this book. Um, so the book I wrote many, several years after the article that you just quoted, but it deals with a lot of the same ideas. And that's because I was deeply, deeply wrestling with, with these questions, what's it mean to meet God in the actual life, I have, not the life I think I should have or the life I dream of having, but the actual life I'm living.
What [00:28:00] does it mean to encounter God in ordinary times where you, it's, I am not on the battlefield. I'm not an war torn place. I'm not in ecstasy. Things aren't amazing. Things also, though, aren't-- I'm not in deep suffering. You know, I'm not, I'm not dying of cancer. It's just sort of like, life. And what does it mean to know God in the midst of life, lifey life, you know?
Um, and so, I was wrestling with these ideas a lot. And there was a spade of books that came out in the late aughts. There was a, a movement in especially evangelical circles where everything was sort of like, radical and on fire, and there were books called, like, Radical.
And this looked different ways. It would go-- you know, go be among the poorest of the poor. There's a movement for that. There was like the 'wild at heart' kind of books, which are, which are not, go live among the poorest of the poor, but they're also like, don't live an ordinary life. That's like, elk hunting and [00:29:00] whatever. [Both laugh] Like, like, canoeing alone through the mountains or, or--
Lee
At least, at least push yourself out of your so-called comfort zone, I guess.
Tish
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So there were, there were all those books. And then there was a, a bit of a, a counter trend after that, where, I believe it's Michael Horton, came out with a book called Ordinary. There was another book that came out around the same time called Boring. There was this, like, group of books that were all sort of like, how to meet God in the mundane.
And they were all very helpful books. I quote some of them even in my book. But it, it felt incomplete to me because it still felt like mostly information, basically telling me, explaining to me, that my ordinary life mattered to God.
Lee
Tish
But I was like, okay, so how's that help me? In the sense of, am I supposed to be like, folding laundry and changing my baby's diaper and saying, like a mantra, like, 'this matters to Jesus,' you know? And it, and so for me it was like, how does it matter?
Lee
Tish
Why [00:30:00] does it matter? What difference is this making? So the notion of small things, small notions, that the way that repair, actual repair of the world is very small and very molecular, um, for everyone. I mean for even, for Mother Teresa, like the, the actual way her day looked was very small acts of love. I mean, she would say that.
So that became important to me. But the other thing that really fell into place that kind of supercharged this book for me and made me want to write it, is the idea of formation. And I was influenced by that a lot by, A) becoming Anglican. So, I discovered Anglicanism in the midst of all of this.
And B) the works of James K. Smith, Jamie Smith. And he wrote a book called Desiring the Kingdom. The language I needed, the-- what I needed for the penny drop was the notion of formation, and how formation is actually not just what we [00:31:00] believe, but the practices of our daily life.
Lee
Tish
The practices of life and, and the practices of liturgy.
And so he really applies that to our gathered liturgy, on Sunday. And, and talks, talks also about spiritual practices in daily life. And so I sort of took that and said like, what, what if I took those notions of, of liturgy, of formation, of formative practices, is the language he uses, and looked at it in an, in one day. One very ordinary day.
And that allowed me to get into the notion of liturgy, the notion of formation, but also, I mean, chapter six in that book, in Liturgy of the Ordinary, which is called 'Passing the Peace,' is, is me completely wrestling with this question of, what does it mean to pursue peace? What does it mean to seek justice, to care for the economically disadvantaged or disenfranchised? [00:32:00] What does that look like for those of us who do have mortgages and kids and who are not Dorothy Day, you know?
Lee
Tish
How, how do we do that? Because I don't wanna, what I don't want is it to be like, well, Dorothy Day gets to know Jesus and gets to live out her life serving the poor, and then the rest of us that raise kids and have mortgages and that sort of thing, are, uh, we just consume, we're just the consumers.
Lee
Tish
Um, and so, figuring out how do we live in ways that are beautiful, that are just, that are seeking of God, was really the project of the entire book, but especially I think in that chapter I drilled down into that and so, yeah, so I think the idea of, how do you meet God in everyday life, what does it mean to-- that, that actually what we're called to is pretty small things, routines, habits, then the idea of liturgy and formative practices, [00:33:00] that sort of like, that was the threads that I needed to kind of, to kind of start to wrestle with these questions.
Lee
We're gonna take a short break, but coming right up, Tish and I discuss finding a third way through some false dichotomies.
So let me, let me move, um, to kind of, in the ten minutes we have left, to kind of a third, third move here, that also hearkens back to the first, but I think weaves its way through the second.
So here you are a, I think raised Southern Baptist, made yourself, uh, along the way, to being ordained as an Anglican, holding onto Christian orthodoxy in public, [00:34:00] and writing for what many would call the "liberal" New York Times.
So how do you think your, kinda what you were describing earlier as trying to find a way to hold onto rigorous notions of conviction in public, it seems that what you're doing is you're, you're trying to say, you know, the, the stereotypical Right is not what I'm interested in, stereotypical Left is not what I'm interested in. I'm interested in a third sort of way. Or so it seems to me you're saying, or at least getting at. Is that fair? Is that, is that a fair enough way to kind of perhaps summarize what your current project in public is?
Tish
That's an interesting question. I don't know. I, I don't know if I've thought about it enough to think about if I want a third way. Anglicans love talking about the third way. So, uh, that, that makes sense to me.
I mean, I will just say, I don't-- because what I'm accused of, and I, and I think is, is there's been a, a [00:35:00] bad notion of kind of 'both sides-ism' in that.
Lee
Tish
It's not that I think, sort of, both sides are equally wrong on things, on everything, but I-- and I also don't, I don't-- so Dorothy Day is a, is a hero. She keeps coming up a lot in this. She's a hero of mine. Nobody would describe her as moderate.
Lee
Tish
She wasn't moderate. She was radical. But she did not fit the binary.
Lee
Tish
And there are ways that she, she's just a radical Catholic, so she was like radically pro-life, like radically. And she like, doctrinally about sex, about marriage, in many ways was very conservative. But she also like, did not believe in capitalism, for instance. I mean, she, she just was a, she was a, a radical progressive in many, many ways.
So yes to what you're saying. Third way, sure. But I would just say, I don't seek the middle on issues. I, in some ways, I, I am just, I want, I want to be sort of radically committed to, to truth and beauty and goodness. I'm [00:36:00] not saying I am radically committed, but I hope to be radically committed to the, to the story of Jesus, the scriptures in Christian orthodoxy. But I think that will make you radical, just in ways that don't fit.
Lee
Tish
So that might produce a third way.
Lee
Right.
I mean, that, that fits with the title of one of your recent columns entitled, 'The God I Know is Not a Culture Warrior,' so I un-- unpack that for us.
Tish
Yeah. So that piece I wrote a, a while ago, and I, I think I was reflecting on, um, there was a really beautiful church service that I went to on, on a Sunday and someone was spontaneously, like, unplanned-- we had baptisms that day and someone, unplanned, like, wanted to be baptized. So we had this, like, beautiful moment where this person came and, and received baptism and, and it was just such a [00:37:00] lovely, amazing time of worship. And, and then I opened up, you know, you go on social media and God just seems like mostly about sociological trends that we can fight over.
You know, God seems to be more or less a tool to bash each other with, you know. The progressive Left claims God to bash the Right, the, the Right certainly claims God to bash the Left. And it just felt so different than the actual experience of worship. And so, I just was trying, I was wrestling in that piece with saying, you know, we are talking about the maker of heaven and earth here, but the way that our religious discourse is around God, one would think that, you know, God just was like [00:38:00]another pundit, you know, and we were all kind of discussing the, the punditry of God.
You know, like we say, 'I, I love Tucker Carlson.' 'Well, I hate Tucker Carlson.' You know, it's like just putting-- or whatever, you know, Rachel Maddow. And then you have Jesus.
Lee
I, if, if you've not written a column entitled 'The Punditry of God,' then I think that you need to get that one out next week. Yeah.
Tish
And then when God comes up in our discourse, it tends to be sociological. So how are white evangelicals voting? Or how does, what is the, the progressive, you know, Left Christians think of this, or what does the progressive Catholics think? You know, it's a-- we talk about God as an American culture when we want to fight.
Lee
Tish
And that is when God comes up in public usually. But if there is a God, which I think there is, it's so... God is so transcendent of all of that. And I don't mean God doesn't care about justice or God doesn't care about politics, but [00:39:00] I think there was a, there was a time I think where we just, we could be too pietistic and, 'we gotta keep God outta politics,' and blah, blah, blah.
We've gone, the pendulum swung so far the other way that now it seems that we only talk about God when we are talking about--
Lee
Tish
--something we're fighting about. A notion of justice or gun control or whatever. I mean, I just wrote last week about God and gun control.
Lee
Tish
So I'm fine with talking about that. But I want to say that at the end of the day, if, if the Christian story is true, which is worth arguing about whether or not it is, but if it is, when, when we rise to see the risen Christ, we're not gonna be talking about the voting patterns of white evangelicals. We're just not.
And so, I was trying to say there's something so much more real about this, that this is-- the Christian faith, and our conversations about [00:40:00] faith... I mean, even since I've worked for the Times, I get letters all the time from agnostics, from Jewish rabbis.
They're, they're asking these questions - like, underneath all of this is these questions of like, what is it to be a human being?
Lee
Tish
How do we know God? How do we know what God wants? Can God say no to us? Can God disappoint us? Can God actually make a claim on us so much that it might change our moral behavior?
Like, our-- what happens when we die? How do we raise our kids? What, where is light in the midst of suffering and darkness? Like, these are very real questions and I feel like we never get to those questions as a culture and a church because we spend so much time fighting about a, a particular group of issues that matter, but don't only matter.
And so--
Lee
Tish
--that, 'The God, I know Isn't a Culture Warrior' was just calling people back to the idea, if we're gonna talk about God, can we remember that there's more happening than just the culture wars when we're [00:41:00] talking about God?
Lee
I don't remember-- and this is a good place for us to end in the next couple minutes, but, um, I don't remember if it was in that same article, um, or another one of your recent pieces, but you allude to the way in which the Hebrew prophet Jeremiah has been important to you in the injunction where he, he says to the Jews in exile... so they're kind of surrounded by people who don't believe their-- what they believe, um, but he, he, he counsels them, "seek the welfare of the city."
Tish
Lee
And you've discussed about how important that is for you.
So, any kind of closing commentary on how you see that agenda, maybe getting at what you just described?
Tish
Well, it's worth noting. I mean, the things we fight about when we fight about the culture war stuff is, what is the welfare of the city? What's best for the city? And we do have really different notions of that.
So I don't deny that. It-- I don't think that we can just sort of-- an issue like, I mean, abortion or [00:42:00] sexuality or the environment, I mean, we're not, we can't just all come together and say kumbaya. Right? Like there are real conversations to be had.
Lee
Tish
That said, I think the spirit that we enter those in is super, super important, because, um, like I said, those are important conversations. Those aren't the, the sum total of what it means to seek the welfare of the city. Um, so there are really important things that the Christian life claims or is wrestling with that are really important to the welfare of the city and that are never going to be a culture war issue. And so because of that, might not ever, might not ever make the news.
I mean one of them is, like, is there actually a God that die-- came to earth, died, and rose from the dead? Like, that's an important question for the welfare of the city. Like, we should wrestle with that.
But there's other things, I think. Like, America is profoundly lonely. Most Americans live their [00:43:00] life in an almost debilitating sense of loneliness. I think that faith has a lot to say to that, and faith communities have a lot to say to that, and we need to address that, but that's not a culture war issue. And so a lot of times we don't.
I think America is, is a, a deeply fearful place. We live in a culture of fear and anxiety. And Christians participate in that and lead that as much as anyone else. But the Christian faith has a lot to say about fear and anxiety. So what does it mean to be a courageous people?
These sorts of things are not culture war questions primarily. They're, they're about becoming a certain type of people. Like in a Hauer-- Stanley Hauerwas kinda way, like the church being the church.
And I think, um, I think we need, I think we need to recall that and come back to that. And even when we approach divisive issues, which I've done multiple times, lots of people, uh, yell at me on Twitter, I think that we need to do it in a [00:44:00] spirit of not trying to conquer, of, of, um, being humble enough that we could be wrong, but also standing really courageously for what we believe, and, and engaging with other people in a profound way.
I mean, this goes back to the pluralism thing. We're gonna have different notions of good. We really are. But there is need to be really robustly represented.
Lee
Tish
And I mean, the New York Times is not telling me to say this or getting any benefit from this, but, uh, I mean, honestly, the, the, the Times has done a great job in the time that I've been there, that two years-- I've been at the Times about two years now. And they invited me in, you know, precisely because I'm a, I'm a, a slightly different viewpoint than a lot of Times columnists and also a lot of Times readers. And, and they've done that really intentionally.
They, they have a pretty broad s-- I mean, they brought on [00:45:00] David French, who's like, to the right of me politically, and they, and they brought on Tressie McMillan Cottom this year, who's, you know, quite a bit to the left of David French for sure, but also of a lot of the others. So they're, they're really seeking a representation of a lot of different viewpoints and, and that gives me hope.
You know, I think it gives me hope that, um, I think we are all-- not all, all people, but I, I think most people are, are really, what keeps them up at night, at the end of the day, we're seeking truth and beauty and goodness, and we, we have really different ideas of what that is, but I think, I really believe that like, truth rises to the top. That, that, that, that if we are able to kind of talk about things, if we're able to hash things out, more good will come from that, like more, more flourishing in, in our communities. More welfare of the city [00:46:00] will come from that than if we're not able to talk and wrestle and, and really approach just deep differences and hash it out, you know?
And, and figure out ways, like with loneliness or, or, or the really intense mental health crisis that we're seeing in teenagers, to work with people across ideological lines to address some of that, that we don't have to agree on everything to, to try to get some good done in the city. You know?
Lee
I've been talking to Tish Harrison Warren, columnist for Christianity Today, and also a columnist for the New York Times.
Tish, thanks so much for your time today. It's been a pleasure talking to you.
Tish
Lee
You've been listening to No Small Endeavor, and our interview with author, Anglican priest, and New York Times [00:47:00] columnist Tish Harrison Warren. If you missed a portion of this interview or would like to have access to the complete unabridged version, you can follow our podcast, No Small Endeavor, wherever you listen.
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