Who is a True Christian w/ David Congdon

Dan McClellan Can you talk about what actually makes a true Christian versus a fake Christian like me?

David Congdon I think political power is part of it, but I would specify it specifically in terms of money. I think it's about money.

Dan McClellan Hey, everybody. I'm Dan McClellan.

Dan Beecher And I'm Dan Beecher.

Dan McClellan And you are listening to the "Data Over Dogma" podcast, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, and combat the spread of misinformation about the same, as long as our locution is where it needs to be, which today it obviously is not. How are things, Dan?

Dan Beecher Man, we're off to a good start. Off to a strong, solid start to our show, which is good.

Dan McClellan Competent podcasters would just start over, but- Yeah.

Dan Beecher But fun podcasters will just- Yeah ... leave it in and keep rolling. Yeah. I'm excited. We have a really interesting discussion today. We're going to be finally, finally getting to the answer to the question, who is a real Christian? And now I can't talk, so- Yeah ... we're all in the same boat. Why don't you introduce our guest before we just run ourselves into a ditch? Yeah.

Dan McClellan Please help us, David. Today we're going to be talking with my friend David Congdon, who is the author of a new book, "Who Is A True Christian? Good Grief: Contesting Religious Identity in American Culture." Good grief is not a part of the subtitle here. And David is the senior editor at the University Press of Kansas and also adjunct set, McCormick Theological Seminary and Dubuque Theological Seminary. David, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for joining us.

David Congdon Thank you for having me. Yeah. It's great to be here.

Dan Beecher If we can actually get any words out, this is going to be a fun conversation, David. The book, "Who Is A True Christian?" It feels like now's the time for this book. Yes. I'm really glad that it's come out because I think that, especially here in the United States, this is what's being screamed on every... If you look at any Dan McClellan comment section or whatever, you're going to find people safeguarding with all their might, mind, and strength their idea of who counts in Christianity and who doesn't count in Christianity. But I think that you will say that this is not a new phenomenon.

David Congdon The timing is really helpful for me. I think as the other Dan will attest, books take a long time to- Yeah ... to gestate and to form. You don't really have much control over when a book comes out. And so I began this book several years ago, thought it would've been out a couple of years earlier than this year, but rather happy that it happened to come out in an election year. Did not anticipate having a mainline Lutheran as a VP candidate- ... who aroused a lot of true Christian claims. These things are all entirely out of my control, but the timing has been quite helpful. Yeah.

Dan McClellan And I like the quote you start off with. You're talking about Trump and the election- Mm-hmm ... from 2020.

David Congdon You begin with Pastor John MacArthur's statement to Donald Trump, "Any real true believer is going to be on your side in this election."

Dan McClellan So we're not dancing around the issue at all, but aiming directly at the fact that who is and isn't a real Christian is not just an academic exercise or something for apologists to bicker about on social media. This is something that is influencing the election of the most powerful figure in geopolitics today. So this is a question that has come to the forefront of public discourse. Well, kind of. I think a lot of it is operating under the surface and between the lines, but I think this book is helpfully bringing it to the surface so we can actually talk about it openly, which again, folks in my comments section are usually not... They don't want to see this talked about openly, at least in a way that they are not in complete and total control of. Right. But as Dan mentioned, this is not the first time, or this is not the only time this has been an issue. And I think your book, interestingly enough, starts off by pointing out that the origins of this discussion have a particular historical and social contingency. And can you talk a little bit about where this question comes from and why it's important to the way the question is being discussed today? Yeah.

David Congdon That's right. Certainly, when I began this book, I was focused on situations happening in 2016 when I first started to think about this project. And as I dug into it deeper, I began to have to push it further and further back in order to make sense of how we got here.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

David Congdon And the way that my book structures it, I frame it in terms of modernity, the modern period, so to speak.

Dan Beecher And I do think that modernity really- Can you just define the modern period? Just because- That might be the whole podcast. People might think that you're talking about from the 20-teens on or whatever, but I don't think that- Yeah.

David Congdon We need a who is a true modern, I guess- ... to really tackle that one. I'm going to roughly use the Reformation or 1492 as a broad marker point, but- Mm-hmm ... I think that what we see in modernity is a challenge to two main authority structures. You have institutional authority And you have ideological authority. So, by institutional authority, I'm referring to the fact that, say, the Pope and the Emperor are presupposed to be authoritative. Right. That those institutions are assumed to have control over society. But then on the ideological side, you have ideas about doctrine, about creeds, about beliefs being normative, and challenges to those norms arising. And one of the things I had to wrestle with is I encounter people who are progressive or left Christians who would reject institutional authority, but strongly affirm the ideological authority- Mm-hmm ... of traditional doctrines and beliefs. And so you have this kind of two-pronged crisis of identity in Christianity and in modernity, and they're not always in sync. Oftentimes they are- Yeah ... but they can be separate.

Dan Beecher So- Those two categories, interestingly, throughout your book, they keep coming up, and they have different names. You call them sort of religion versus theology, or rules versus beliefs, or authoritarianism versus orthodoxy. But those ideas are sort of a thread throughout your book and throughout, as you say, the history of this question. Yeah. So, talk a little bit about each of those categories, each of those ideas as how they affect, and who's using those ideas differently when asking the question of what is true Christianity? Or who is a real Christian?

David Congdon They're not always consciously or consistently using this terminology. So, in some ways, I'm trying to impose a framework to make sense of this morass- Yeah ... of norm claiming, right? Mm. Or authority claiming. It's messy, to say the least. I use a quote in the book from Peter Harrison, the historian, who has a nice statement about how the shift in modernity is a shift from salvation belongs to the true church, to salvation is from true belief, the right belief. Right. So, you do see a shift from more institutional claims to more ideological claims happening in the modern period, as authority structures are less tangible, less salient to most people's lives. But I would say language of rule and canon and those kinds of languages are certainly more on the institutional side. They tend to fall on structures and institutions that are setting out those rules and norms. Things like orthodoxy, though, they're a little flimsier in terms of being able to identify exactly what orthodoxy means for each particular person. Mm. This project I didn't begin to set out as a critique of orthodoxy. I eventually arrived there by the time I finished this book, and I have a whole chapter kind of critiquing the concept of orthodoxy as kind of the climax of my study.

Dan Beecher But- And when we say orthodoxy, sorry, just to clarify- Yeah ... we're talking about sort of a set of theological mandates or beliefs that are required?

David Congdon Would that be a fair way of- Yeah, I think nowadays that's sort of what orthodoxy means for most people, is just simply a set of beliefs or doctrines that is accepted as true, but specifically as normative for a community of faith. Okay.

Dan Beecher I think it's- Sorry to interrupt.

Dan McClellan So go on with what you were saying.

David Congdon Well, I think you have to sort of parse out in different situations what people mean by these terms.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

David Congdon So, there's a certain flexibility and fuzziness around these language of norms and rules and doctrines. I think that fuzziness is, for some people, very intentional, because it allows them to maneuver authority structures to meet the needs of their particular moment and their community.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

David Congdon Orthodoxy, I think, is a classic example of this. What orthodoxy means is always in flux. We're always constructing orthodoxy constantly, right? But the value or the authority of orthodoxy rests on this assumption that it's static, right? That it's permanent, it's eternal, it's always been there. Right? Which, of course, is not the case, and never has been the case. Right. But that association of orthodoxy with permanence, with continuity, lends it a certain gravitas and significance and authority for people's lives that you can use for purposes of structuring power, and negotiating people's lives and how communities are going to operate. Yeah.

Dan McClellan I think that's such a kind of universal fiction that an awful lot of Christians use in that structuring of power and values and boundaries. There's so many things that are eternal and immutable and unchanging that are, once you actually look at them with a critical eye, are never the same. They're always different. And just the idea that orthodoxy is what determines the essence, and you talk for quite a bit about the essence of Christianity. That's something that has only existed for the recent, the last quarter of the period of Christianity's existence, for the first 75% of Christianity's existence, there was an authority structure that spoke with ultimate authority, and that was it. And then come the Reformation, and everything changes, and a big part of that was actually deconstructing that authority and democratizing it to some degree, which removed that essence that got to make the decisions. And now everybody's on a search to try to... I don't know if they're trying to achieve that authority without the actual structure. Because, and particularly within evangelicalism, which is the loudest voice, and at least in America in this discourse, it's quite spread out and it's quite decentralized, and I think they value that, but at the same time, they still want to try to be in charge of what Christianity is allowed to be.

David Congdon I think that's partly what's interesting about the new kind of surge in interest in Christian nationalism and integralism and those authoritarianism structures is you see these Protestants, and especially evangelicals, sort of pining for an institutional authority that hasn't existed for hundreds of years, and- They got rid of it. They got rid of it. Precisely. And it will never come back. There's no way to recover that. Right. And yet they are actively forming coalitions to attempt, or at least to claim to achieve that authority.

Dan McClellan You think Trump is the Messiah of this authoritarianism? Is this a way for them to achieve a degree of authority that is otherwise beyond the grasp of evangelical Christianity in America?

David Congdon I think in as many ways he is. I think that's partly because Trump is such a raw lust for power that he is infinitely moldable to the ideological needs of whoever is willing to give him power, right? Mm. And that's really attractive for a community that wants to gain power and legitimacy in society, to gain more control. They just need somebody who's going to bulldoze their way- Yeah ... into positions of power and doesn't really care about institutional norms or any of those other moral issues, is willing to give them the power if they'll put them in charge. Yeah.

Dan McClellan Even if it means totally obliterating all of their standards and their mores that- Right ... they have always asserted are of prime importance. And then once you get to the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and you start to try to... A big project within European imperialism was categorizing everything, categorizing the whole world and all the people within it, and hierarchizing the world- Yeah ... and everybody within it as well. And Aristotle, the ghost of Aristotle haunts an awful lot of what's going on here.

David Congdon But I want to get back to this idea of the essence of Christianity, this essentialism, this notion that we can reduce things to necessary and sufficient features that allow us to define and encapsulate and control things.

Dan McClellan Can you talk about what you found fascinating about this search for the essence of Christianity? Yeah.

David Congdon The essence is a term that, of course, it's sort of fallen out of favor for obvious reasons for a lot of people today. But it was the banner under which this, quote-unquote, "liberal Christianity," emerged in that kind of post-Enlightenment period. And the term itself is interesting because it actually has roots in pre-Enlightenment writers, people who were more actually trying to defend Christianity against liberalism, people like Richard Hooker and folks like that. But it quickly becomes this kind of rally point for liberals and others who are wanting to challenge traditions and orthodoxies in institutions.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

David Congdon And the thing that's attractive about it is it provides a way to bypass doctrine, bypass the tradition, and find something pure. That's the attractiveness of it for- Yeah ... a lot of those folks. And many of those early liberals were very mystical in their orientation. They wanted to attain some divine essence, some divine purity that was beyond the violence and degradation of history. And so there's that quest for purity, that quest for eternity, that in many ways, the liberals were the ones who really launched it, but then, of course, the conservatives took it over in their own way.

Dan Beecher Yeah, that was an interesting... One of your chapters, I believe, started with a quote that said that evangelicals are the new liberals. Right. And obviously they ain't in a lot of ways, but in this way, in this sort of search for an essential quality, a sort of boiling down of, or maybe just a boundary for who gets to call themselves Christianity. They sort of- Yes ... they kind of took over that quest.

David Congdon Well, that's what's really been fascinating for me. For the last 50 years or so, you see this odd role reversal within American Christianity in particular, where I see a lot of mainline Protestants, traditional liberal Protestants, rediscover a strong interest in tradition, in doctrine, in orthodoxy.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

David Congdon On the flip side, you have the "conservative evangelical wing" of American Protestantism, American Christianity. While they also are sort of on this quest for historic Christianity and all that, they are quite willing to rethink and redefine Christianity in rather radical ways to kind of fit their political agenda, right? And so, they're proposing all kinds of new statements, Nashville Statement and whatever it might be to provide a new creed for Christianity today. It's an interesting phenomenon, I think. Yeah.

Dan McClellan And a lot of it- Which gives us folks like Joel Webbon Yes. Who is trying to just overturn everything that makes this world worth living in. It is, yeah.

Dan Beecher So one of the things that I found interesting about your book when you were discussing sort of the history of this quest, and you call this... I think at one point you said that all of Christianity since the Reformation has been questing, has been this sort of quest to figure out what the heck Christianity actually is. But you've sort of pointed to a few moments in history that were sort of pivotal moments just in world history. So, at one point you pinpointed World War II, and you talked about C.S. Lewis and contrasted his quest for an essence of Christianity with a German whose name I've forgotten now. Yeah, Rudolf Bultmann. Bultmann, okay. So talk a little bit about- Can't forget Bultmann ... their quests.

David Congdon Well, the World War II is interesting for a number of reasons, but I think in general, kind of global critical moments where broad challenges to the status quo, challenges to institutions, right? In many ways, the First World War was that for Europe, right? That was a crumbling of institutions. So we see Weimar Republic and eventually Nazi Germany arise out of the ashes of that war, right? But I think for North America in particular, the Second World War is a especially pivotal moment. You see a lot of institutions form in the wake of that postwar period. But in terms of C.S. Lewis and Rudolf Bultmann, I like that kind of contrast because they're both writing at the exact same time. They're writing in the context of a war in the early '40s, in which both of them are attempting to articulate what Christianity is today. Bultmann, who I did a lot of work on earlier in my career, is very famous for his what's called demythologizing of Christianity. He got put up to heresy trials as a result of that. And when he went on a tour in the US in the '50s, when he was introduced at places like Princeton Seminary, he was introduced as this great heretic. And so, the president of Princeton Seminary said, "We still have things to learn from heretics." And so it's a rather humorous image. But so you have Bultmann, who is this perceived heretic, perceived blasphemer of Christian doctrine. But then you have C.S. Lewis, who of course is beloved now by evangelicals for being an apologist for Christianity. But his mere Christianity is itself an attempt to provide an account of the essence, of the Christian essence, which is language he does use at times. And if you read it from that lens, it's rather interesting to think about it as a contribution to what is really a liberal Protestant trajectory in terms of trying to formulate a relevant and convincing account of Christianity for the modern period.

Dan Beecher Do you think you could come up with a, this may be unfair of me to ask, but a sort of a brief summation of C.S. Lewis's ideas versus Bultmann's ideas?

David Congdon Just- Yeah, sure. So I categorize in my book three different types of the Christian essence or Christian rule. You have a doctrinal type, and you have a kind of a cultural or experiential type, and then you have a kind of a practical or political type. And I sort of trace the history in those terms. Lewis is a classic doctrinal type of Christian. He thinks Christianity simply is a set of doctrines, which includes trinity, incarnation, and atonement. Mm. And then also a little bit on moral beliefs, practical living. Right. That's his essence. It's just a set of doctrines, and he talks repeatedly in his book about how he's not trying to make this up. This is just the way it is. This is just what Christianity has always been. It's been these four things or whatever. And if you don't like it, that's fine. Do your own thing. But this is what Christianity is. And he uses the analogy of dictionary words, which I know, Dan, you are a big fan of dictionary definitions.

Dan McClellan Don't want to talk about it.

David Congdon But he uses that analogy where words have a definition. This is what a word means. And he says Christianity is the same way. Christianity simply means this, this set of doctrines.

Dan Beecher It's funny because having been on a show with Dan for a little over a year now, and so I am not only suspicious of dictionary definitions now, but very suspicious when someone tells me they know exactly what a- Christianity might be. Absolutely. So immediately, Lewis, you're on thin ice, buddy. So where's Bultmann coming from?

David Congdon So that's Lewis. Right. I mean, Bultmann is on the very far opposite end of this in terms of, for him, I would place him broadly in this kind of mystical liberal tradition. And for him, the essence or what he calls the kerygma, which is this Greek term for proclamation, and he uses the word kerygma in a really creative, unique way. It does represent what liberals previously had called the essence, and it is pre-linguistic. It's pre-rational. It's not something that can ever be put into definitive linguistic form. It doesn't have a definition at all. It cannot have one.

Dan Beecher That's helpful. Thanks.

David Congdon So he has this letter that Bultmann wrote this letter to Heidegger actually in the '20s or, oh, no, maybe later than that. I forget now. But he wrote a letter to Heidegger where he said the purpose of all of this is to be on this ongoing pursuit of trying to identify what the kerygma is, but you'll never arrive. You'll never get there. And so he holds it out as like this carrot that we're striving to reach the kerygma. But it's this transcendent, eschatological reality that lies beyond our historical finite grasp.

Dan Beecher Christianity as a stationary bike.

David Congdon In some ways, right.

Dan McClellan Well, I think that is probably one of the more kind of honest approaches to what Christianity is because it is whatever people say it is. And so recognizing that this is not something that we can actually nail down gets closer than the folks who suggest that, oh, we can nail it down because their nails and whatever they're nailing down are always just socially and historically contingent, just ideologies. And this is something that I think is fascinating about this search for an essence is it's always an attempt to shed whatever cultural trappings you don't like to say, "Ah, here's the essence, and here are all my cultural trappings that I do like that are all validated by this essence." And even C.S. Lewis, I saw something on Twitter the other day where somebody pointed out that in a volume that C.S. Lewis wrote on something on the Psalms, I forget exactly what the title was, but C.S. Lewis in 1958 was like, "Yeah, there's contradiction, there's wickedness, there's evil going on. There are things in the Psalms that are bad." And the person pointed out inerrancy was not the battleground, was not part of the essence of Christianity in 1958, so Lewis could get away with that and nobody cared. Now, however, inerrancy is at the heart of a lot of what's going on there. And even as people, not just fundamentalists and evangelicals, but folks like Jordan Peterson and others who want to latch onto Lewis as some kind of validator of Christianity as the great hope for humanity appeal to Lewis and are just like, "Eh, we don't care about that. We're going to ignore that part."

David Congdon Lewis is part of a British tradition, of course, that never had an interest in inerrancy and still doesn't. Yeah. British evangelicals always like to complain about the American evangelicals for this very reason. Yeah.

Dan McClellan James Barr wrote a book on fundamentalism- Yes. Right. Precisely ... where he distinguished British and American evangelicalism and was like- And it's an important distinction ... "Don't know what's wrong with those idiots."

David Congdon I mean, the thing about scripture is fascinating, too, because I do think the inerrancy debates are, while they still happen, it is largely a thing of the past, in my opinion. The inerrancy wars were big in the '70s, '80s, and then especially into the '90s. But, one of the things I've noticed, I do think this is increasingly the case since 2000 or early 2000s, is that a lot of the evangelicals, they'll still, of course, appeal to inerrancy, appeal to the Bible, of course. But there isn't the same sense that inerrancy or scripture is going to be the answer that will address the problems. I think there was a sort of naive assumption that if we just get people on board with Christianity, we do enough evangelistic crusades and all the rest, we get people converted, then they'll just follow our social and moral political beliefs because the Bible is just so obvious, right?

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

David Congdon Once you accept the Bible's authority, the rest will follow.

Dan Beecher I happen to know of a podcast that might confuse that. That might be tricky. It might make that a tricky claim.

David Congdon It might, yes. Right. And I think that became increasingly apparent to them that that was just never going to be the case, that that wasn't going to happen. And I do think there's been a rhetorical shift away from inerrancy and the Bible as being the focal point to other areas. I think that's partly why we see this interest in Christian nationalism is because it's not going to be the Bible that's going to be the answer. You got to force the institutions, the political institutions of power- Political power ... right, to force that way of life on the people because they're not going to adhere to it just by simply being Christian.

Dan McClellan Yeah, that's an interesting- So the one authority failed, so they're like, "All right. We're going to try another authority structure." Right. Yeah. Right.

Dan Beecher And this sort of ties into one of the things that happens a lot in your book, which is when we're discussing the modern question of who is a true Christian, it does tend to centralize on certain political questions. It centralizes on the questions of abortion or the questions of other sort of societal questions rather than theological questions. Yes. Or it centralizes those societal questions around theological questions. The rise of the power of the evangelical movement, the political power of the evangelical movement, which started sort of in the '70s, '80s, especially centering around this question of abortion. I thought I had a question. There was a question sort of formulating, I'm sure. But talk a bit about how this is structuring itself and about what the landscape looks like now.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher Well, maybe not beyond Dan's comment sections, because what an interesting little slice of this conversation it is to read the comment sections in any of Dan's videos. It becomes very clear how these people are drawing their lines.

David Congdon It's where I go first. It's very entertaining. Yeah.

Dan McClellan Well, and I think there's an interesting point to make here, that one of the reasons that prior to Falwell and Wyrick and these others- Yeah ... there were an awful lot of Christians who were like, "Political power bad." Right.

David Congdon The scriptures say we should not be searching for this. That is not Christianity. That is opposed to Christianity.

Dan McClellan And then we had these campaigns to galvanize a religious right, that fundamentally had to do with the ability to keep Black folks out of evangelical universities and folks- Yep ... and things like that. But now on the other side of this, it seems to me we're kind of getting the outcome of all of this, where we're now having people saying, "It doesn't matter if Donald Trump is a rapist or an adulterer or any of these things, because he's going to give us the power, and that's what's important." That's quite a significant shift. So yeah, could you talk a little bit about how things have changed since the '70s? Yeah.

David Congdon Well, to go back to the point about the doctrine issue, because I do think what's interesting about this shift is doctrine is just no longer important to most people. It's not relevant for most people's lives, and I think everyone recognizes that. There's a general sense of acknowledgement that the doctrine exists. It's there, but it's largely faded from view. I think there's some historical reasons for that.

Dan Beecher I think people will be surprised to hear that. You say everybody recognizes this. I don't think a lot of people do. I think it's true in people's lives, but if you asked them if the doctrine was important, I think most people would say- Yes ... it is, but I think- That's true.

David Congdon That's true ...

Dan Beecher I think you're right.

David Congdon Well, I think doctrine is a proxy now, right? The doctrine is a proxy for other things. That is to say, it's not the doctrine itself, so to speak, that is what is so crucially important. It's that it's a stand-in for a larger set of cultural, political, social values, and norms. So even some of the folks who are on the left will talk about the importance of the Trinity, for example, right? And certainly, I do believe that they're sincere, that the doctrine of the Trinity is crucial to them. That's fine. But it's more than that. The Trinity is a stand-in for a church and a liturgy, right? A liturgical community that is shaping our culture, shaping their culture, shaping their values, that whether you belong to that church or not is kind of reflected in how strongly you adhere to this doctrine, right?

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

David Congdon And so the doctrine becomes a portal to a larger set of institutional social values.

Dan McClellan Well, it becomes an identity marker. Right. But I think its use as an identity marker usually takes over from its doctrinal significance. And because of the constant negotiation between our sacred past and our present and our future, those identity markers still have value even if the content is no longer there, and now it just functions as a credibility-enhancing display- Correct ... or something like that, or a means to the next end, which is now not doctrine, but power. Yeah.

David Congdon And I think that's the "Religion Is Make-Believe" book, which you had a episode about, which I love. It's a really important and helpful book. It's all about that, right? It's a group identity marker precisely for that reason. Yes. And I think on the flip side, in terms of the story about evangelicals, evangelicals are a really interesting case because there you see the atrophy of doctrine really profoundly, in many ways. You look at the contemporary non-denominational evangelical church today, doctrine is not on their radar. It's there maybe on their website, but that's not what they're preaching or promoting. Or to put it another way, a traditional set of doctrines associated with creeds and councils and all the rest is not the focal point. What's now is a new set of doctrines that has arisen that are being constructed in real time. We're seeing effectively a new creed being written right now by para-church networks and activist organizations. So you look at something like the Nashville Statement. I do think that you can say that the average American evangelical, their creed has to do with marriage, it has to do with abortion, it has to do with patriarchy, and all these other social structures. That's their creed. It's almost irrelevant what you believe about the incarnation. What you believe about some of those traditional views about the Holy Spirit or whatever. That's not the concern.

Dan Beecher Well, one of the things that has happened, and especially in the American evangelical landscape, is that the creed has become almost atomized to each individual church, each individual pastor. His flock has its own creed, or her flock has their own creed, and every now and then you'll see them get together for whatever group, and the infighting begins because they can't even decide amongst themselves what's correct and what isn't. Yes.

David Congdon I would say some of the people who are really strongly adhering to ancient creeds, they'll say, "We don't have creeds today. They have confessions or statements of faith." They'll try to make that distinction. A proper creed requires an ecumenical council. The really hardcore traditionalists will strongly emphasize that. But yes, I think you're exactly right. We have a plethora of statements of faith that we all are just assuming that that's what our guiding principles are.

Dan McClellan So as Christianity becomes defined more by pluriformity than by consistency, what is driving the boundaries that are reified? What is driving what is acceptable variation within Christianity versus what puts one outside of Christianity? It sounds like political power is the target for most of the reduction of Christianity to necessary and sufficient features. So is it just whatever threatens political power? Is it more complex than that? Is it social? It doesn't sound like it's very doctrinal. Can you talk about what actually makes a true Christian versus a fake Christian like me?

David Congdon Political power is part of it, but I would specify it specifically in terms of money. I think it's about money. Okay. And I use the example in the book about colleges. I use Wheaton College as an example, but you could use almost any Christian college or any Christian institution these days. You look at what threatens the organization. It's threatening donors, it's threatening enrollment, it's threatening participation in their activities, their organization subscriptions. So it's about money. Okay. And I do think that is the structuring principle, the criterion for defining the boundaries. Orthodoxy is a flexible category that by and large for most Christian organizations doesn't get used until somebody threatens a money base, until somebody threatens that source.

Dan McClellan I want to share a brief story just to punctuate this. So I worked for just over a decade as a scripture translation supervisor for the LDS church, and I would go occasionally to a conference that was called BT Bible Translation that usually took place just outside of Dallas, and it was overwhelmingly evangelical groups, a lot of them doing a lot of really good work around the world. And I was always trying to collaborate with folks, sometimes because I thought I could contribute, sometimes because I wanted something. For instance, there's a Bible translation machine called Paratext. I was like, "We could really do a lot with this machine. We could learn a lot from it. This could be helpful for us." And I had friends who were parts of organizations that were using it and even that were parts of the Paratext organization itself. And we never were able to get any approval for this, and it always was the same reason. If our donors find out that a Mormon is doing this, we will lose donors. And so I have seen that in real life, in living color. So that makes an awful lot of sense, and it also kind of cheapens the Christianity. But those institutional concerns, I think it's fascinating that the institution ultimately is what is driving things, even as the Reformation and the Enlightenment was all about deconstructing the institution. You're right.

David Congdon What we have now are a plurality of institutions all vying for this marketplace, this free marketplace, so to speak. Not really, but anyway, that's the idea is that they're trying to vie for donors, for funding, for support. And I think one of the things about the American experiment politically with the wall of separation between church and state is that it has forced churches to be marketing machines. In a way that an established church system, the church can rely on taxes coming to them to support their institution. So the institution is just in place. It's stabilized by public funding. When you don't have public funding for the churches or for anything, this includes higher education, this includes whatever. When you don't have public funding to support it, you have to market yourself. You have to be this PR machine going out there hustling for those funds. And that means that everything is subordinate to that mission. Your statement of faith means nothing if it doesn't get you that funding, if it doesn't keep the lights on and keep going. So the capitalist, neoliberal landscape of America today means that every church ultimately is subservient to the dictates of the market. That's the reality.

Dan McClellan And this is why evangelical universities have to have statements of faith and why there are folks like Pete Enns and like others- Exactly ... who they are shed from this because they know that threatens the interest of donors. Even though the donors may be operating on a more doctrinal level- Yes ... fundamentally, what is driving that engagement and that interaction is the institutional concerns for the money. Do you think this is why fundamentalist Christianity, evangelical Christianity stands so opposed to socialist approaches? Absolutely. Interesting.

David Congdon Oh, for sure. 100%. No, it's all baked in there, right? Yeah. It does come down to that issue. And we all know these organizations that if their funding base changed its beliefs and their values, they would change in a heartbeat, right? Oh, yeah. Tomorrow they would change. We saw this with the whole World Vision scandal, with them trying to change their policy on employees. Fuller Seminary is going through it right now. Fuller Seminary is currently in the process of possibly changing their position on marriage. Exactly, right?

Dan McClellan For those of you listening, I held up a copy of the book, "The Widening of God's Mercy: Sexuality within the Biblical Story" by Chris Hayes and his dad, Richard Hayes, which basically has this very influential evangelical scholar, Richard Hayes, changing his mind about LBGTQIA inclusion within evangelical Christianity and making a biblical case for it. Right. And I think Chris is at Fuller. He's at Fuller. Yeah.

David Congdon He's a professor at Fuller. Yeah. Richard Hayes' change of mind is, of course, notable in itself, but Christopher Hayes' employment at Fuller is the bigger story, in my opinion. Yeah. Because that's an institution that has fired faculty in the past- Yeah ... for having this very position.

Dan Beecher And then Chris talks about- For being LGBTQ inclusive? Is that what you're saying? Correct. Yes. Okay. Yeah. Correct.

Dan McClellan And Chris talks about the lay of the land at Fuller in- Yeah ... the beginning of the book. Yeah.

Dan Beecher It does seem like a lot of these, as society liberalizes, or rather, as society changes its position on questions like abortion, on questions like LGBTQ inclusion, and you can tell me if I'm wrong or right about this, but it feels like one of the things that happens is all of these institutions that had been traditionally non-inclusive, and that non-inclusivity, that then becomes part of their, again, identity markers and stuff, and they dig in their heels. They sort of solidify and recalcitrate into these things until they can't take it anymore. And it feels like we might be reaching an inflection point, or we might be heading toward an inflection point where society will no longer, society at large, the view will overpower these institutions. Do you think that's something that's going to happen?

David Congdon For some of them, yes. I think the problem, the challenge that we're facing, though, is that institutional Christianity is just simply dying- Mm ... across the board. And that just means that the writing is on the wall for most of these institutions, that they're not going to recover something like it was, right?

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm. They're bleeding members.

David Congdon So, it's not currently in their best interest, for most of them, to change to a more affirming or progressive or more liberal position on a lot of these matters because there's not a base of people clamoring to come back.

Dan Beecher That's a good point. A lot of people, because of their affirmation of LGBTQ people, just as an example, they left the church. Yeah. Because the church wouldn't go with them into that realm. And so, yes, then when you say, "Oh, no, wait, look, here's church that's following you where you're going-" Yeah ... they're like, "No, I've already left that institution. I don't need that anymore."

David Congdon Yeah, I think I'm one of them. That's been my own trajectory. And I'm fine with that. I think a lot of churches, a lot of Christian institutions, probably, if they aren't already, have to come to grips with the fact that they had a time and a place to serve their constituents and their audience, and that time is quickly coming to an end. Wow. I talked to a lot of mainline church leaders and people in denominations. I've been involved with PCUSA for a while. I'm not PCUSA, but I teach a lot of their ministers. And they are very open about this. They recognize that they are here for a time to help these churches die well, right? Wow.

Dan Beecher That's bleak.

David Congdon It's bleak, but they are being trained to have their eyes open about this because that's the state of things. And so a lot of them go into these churches, these small churches that have maybe 20 members left, and they know that they're on a hospice care for that church.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

David Congdon It'd be three to five, 10 years maybe, and then they're going to shutter those doors. And that's their call. That's what their ministry is. Yeah.

Dan Beecher So I- I do feel like a lot of what we see, especially in the loudest of the big evangelicals, is a desperation. When we see these pastors and these large figures screaming about Christian nationalism, it feels like they're fighting for their lives. They are. Yeah.

David Congdon I mean- And I think- Yeah.

Dan McClellan I'm sorry, go ahead. I interrupted you.

David Congdon No, go ahead.

Dan McClellan Well, I was just going to say, it seems like there are folks who are digging in their heels. They see the writing on the wall, and rather than try to chart a new way forward, they're just going to dig in their heels and double down on things, which is what gives us the Joel Webbons and the Mark Driscolls, and the folks who are just going to commit fully to a more radical identity marker so that they can try to reap the fringes of society so that they have some kind of membership, some kind of income, and they don't care if it means there are people wearing swastikas in their services. But that would be if they're trying to reach the most radical and the most extreme just for the sake of the tithe. It sounds like that's the last heartbeat of institutional Christianity, and that's beating true. It's exactly what it has been the entire time, about trying to structure power and values and boundaries in a way that serves their moneyed interests. Yeah. And there's a lot of money tied up- There's a lot of money ... in this kind of stuff. And so it sounds like they're just trying to find out how to appeal to the most checkbooks right now. Absolutely.

David Congdon That is exactly what's going on, and I think we're also seeing what Christianity means for that group changing to basically, it's indistinguishable from a political party. Oh, yeah. It's indistinguishable from a political organization, and those words might very well, in the very near future, be synonymous. That when you say Christianity in the US context, it just means Republican Party, far right. Interesting. That's probably inevitably where things are headed, and I think part of that's what I was doing in my politics chapter, was kind of tracing how that's happening, why that's happening. Yeah. But because doctrine is no longer really the issue anymore, because it's a set of cultural values and norms and political policies, that line of distinction is being erased. And because politics is going to be with us forever, we're always going to have the political. That's the source of growth for these pastors, to become effectively local party leaders. Yeah.

Dan McClellan Which strikes me as part of kind of a much larger scale macro trajectory, because you start with the Reformation. The Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Enlightenment is what kind of created the dichotomy of the secular and the sacred, of the political and the religious. And people get upset about the intersection of the two, and it's like their distinction is artificial to begin with. Mm. And we've been trying to keep them apart, but to me, it seems like a pretty natural reconvergence. Now, because we've reified the distinction and we have created two separate categories, it's more of a marriage now rather than a kind of Borgian becoming part of the same thing again.

Dan Beecher An assimilation? Yeah, rather than an assimilation.

David Congdon Now it's just a marriage, a union of two distinct things.

Dan McClellan But it seems almost like the gravitational pull brought them right back together again, and it's almost like the moon crashing back into the Earth after having been created by some other impact.

Dan Beecher Ejected from it. Yeah.

David Congdon The history of that sacred/secular distinction is interesting in itself. I might actually rephrase it a little bit differently in the sense that the medieval church erected that distinction within its own terms, right?

Dan McClellan As a different set of- Yeah, like this is the police department of the church, and this is- Right ... the other part of the church. Yeah. Yeah.

David Congdon And so when the institution falls down or gets deconstructed, you have to change how those terms function. It's no longer a different set of offices in society. Now it becomes this different set of values or different set of norms that are operating. Yeah. But they've always been in this very odd dialectical tangle where how you draw that distinction is reflective of the agenda you have in that moment.

Dan McClellan We talked in a previous show about the development of the concept of religion and how in the early medieval period, you had religious and secular monastic orders. And so that was kind of the original distinction- Yes. Exactly ... of the two that then becomes what is fought against in the Reformation. And so when you pull back and take a look at the whole macro history, it's fascinating to see how, again, we are always in negotiation with what has come before, and we can't really escape. It would be nice if we could just take a-- If we had the sacred timeline, and we could just kind of cut it off and start a new one and not have to deal with what came before, but that's not how the world works. And so what do you see beyond... Have you looked beyond what happens when pastors just become party bosses? Which is something that we have here in Utah. Sure. We've got most of our legislators are- It's a theocracy. Yeah. Have you considered what happens after that?