#221 | Is Politics Killing Evangelicalism? Pt 1 with Pete Wehner

In the end, what, what's going to matter most in terms of healing a country would be the healing of individual lives.

And that is, is really a matter, I think of leaning into, into people in a community of faith, including leaning into the lives of people that disagree with, with you and not viewing them as political projects that you have to change their views on, but getting to know them and their stories and their history and the seasons in life that they may be in.

It's watering time, everybody.

It's time for Apollo's Watered, a podcast to saturate your faith with the things of God so that you might saturate your world with the good news of Jesus Christ. My name is Travis Michael Fleming and I am your host. And today we're having another one of our.

Deep conversations.

Politics. For many, it's a downright dirty word. You don't want to touch it with a 10 foot pole because simply look at what it does.

It splits families and it ends friendships that have lasted for decades. Now for others out there, politics has become all consuming. You've got your phone with you 24 7, always checking your feed.

You want to the newest news and what's going on. Now there are those who are really into politics. If you don't agree with them, you aren't just wrong, you're probably evil.

I mean, there's not even a discussion. And for those who are in Christian circles and you disagree with them, you could actively be opposing God and that might actually be true.

Okay, that can happen. But for those of us in the United States who have to deal with politics on a regular basis, it's not always a fun thing. It's just not.

It's going to be a long year no matter what your thoughts are on him. And increasingly, churches are embroiled in the tensions.

There is one side calling out the other side and the rhetoric that it died down for a bit is ratcheting back up.

I know of so many different pastors who are simply trying to avoid blowouts and misunderstandings, knowing that if they say certain things, almost anything, even from the Bible itself, they could be out of a job where people will just quietly disappear because it's being interpreted through political lenses and they might just fade away, ghost them. And we're not talking about people who are just friends, people here.

We're talking about intimate friendships and even Family, people who have had a front row seat in your life. To say that it's stressful is an understatement.

And I know of many church leaders, probably most that I interact with, who simply wish it would all go away and they didn't have to deal with it. And frankly, we understand that. We would love to be able to just focus on the kingdom of God. Let's just preach the word and leave it there.

It's one of those third rails. One wrong step and you are fried.

Now here at Apollos Watered, we could have avoided any discussions of politics because we're not a political organization, nor do we want to be. And we have lots of listeners from around the world for whom American politics has little immediate interest.

Although you might be surprised for those Americans that are out there, that there are people around the world who actually closely follow our elections simply because of the outsized influence that we have. I know that I've traveled and I've had people talk to me about politics in the middle of a Liberian airport. So politics is everywhere.

And that's the reality we have to face. It impacts the way we live. It impacts how we go about the mission of God. You can't avoid it. You can't be an ostrich with your head in the sand.

It's not going to just go away. You can't just preach the word and not deal with the reality of the world in which we are living.

And we have to face the fact that the way that we engage politically has a direct impact on how the unbelieving world around us sees Christians and their willingness to respond to the message, the mission that we have. And in our Western world today that is increasingly unchristian and often outright hostile to our faith.

It's imperative that we think and act well politically.

Now, I'm not saying that we compromise the integrity of the Word of God or compromise on the issues that we hold dear, but we need to think about not only the message that is being communicated, but the means that we employ in order to get that message out there.

And we have to remember that our first allegiance is always to Christ and that we're his ambassadors in everything that we do and in everything that we say. So with more than a little fear and trepidation over the next few episodes, we're going to tackle the subject of politics.

I know I've got a death wish.

We're going to have conversations with people who don't entirely agree with one another, but both are Christ followers, and it's likely that you might find elements of one or both of these interviewees that you simply don't agree with. That's fine. That's actually kind of the point.

Simply because politics has become such a hot button issue for so many, because it has become the defining characteristic for everybody. We want to drill down on how we are thinking about politics now.

Let's just examine the issues, but let's get down, really down deep into what we're trying to convey. How are we, in other words, acting our politics out? We aren't sitting out to talk about a particular set of policies.

No, that's not what we're trying to do. Nor are we saying that this party is good and this party is bad.

Many of the symptoms and problems we see find examples in both major political parties here in the United States. Retaining power, winning at all costs has become the name of the game.

Now, I know that there are some out there saying, okay, all right, I understand you don't like this or you don't like that, but what's the alternative? Well, we're going to talk about that today. We do not expect Christians to often act like Christians. That's. That's a problem.

We do expect that Christians act out our faith, that we live out what we believe we should anyway, shouldn't we?

So as we come to these conversations, we ask that you come to them both with open hearts and open minds, that you will be willing to listen to the points that are made, even if you disagree. Is God convicting you of something? Is there a change in approach that you need to make?

Have you let your particular issue or candidate lead you to compromise on things that things you believe in order to win? Our first guest is Peter Wehner.

Peter is a writer and thinker who served in the Reagan administration as well as both Bush presidencies, including as head of the Office for Strategic Initiatives. He's written three books and has written for many publications recently, especially for the Atlantic and the New York Times.

He's also a senior fellow at the Trinity Forum. I had an opportunity, or I had the opportunity to meet Pete at a symposium and found him to be very thoughtful and a true Christ follower.

And as an insider to politics and as a Christian, I wanted to get his perspective. Now, there's one item of note that I wanted to bring to your attention right before we have this conversation.

Originally, we had planned to run this conversation before Christmas, but due to a variety of different things that went on, we weren't able to do so. So now we're presenting it to you and just be aware that the fast five is Christmas themed. Now let's get to my conversation with Pete Wehner.

Happy listening. Pete Wehner. Welcome to Apollo's Watered.

Great to be with you. It's the waters are pretty nice.

I hear they're a lot of fun. But you are here just in time for our Christmas edition. And so today we're going to do the Fast5 Christmas edition. Are you ready?

I am ready.

Okay, here we go. These are easy, just normal little Christian traditions here. But what's your favorite go to Christmas movie?

Oh, gosh. My favorite go to Christmas is probably Charlie Brown Christmas. Try and watch even with our kids who are in their 20s.

Oh, that's a good little tradition. How about that? How about the next one then? Favorite Christmas carol.

Let's see. What's my favorite Christmas carol? Come all you joy to the world Come all you faithful.

All of those are just so good. That's the hard part is seeing some of these hymnals go away and people don't know how to sing some of these songs anymore.

Yeah, yeah. You know, it's interesting because some of it just depends on the mood that I'm in.

You know, one service, it may be one hymn and one service may be another. It's always been actually something with me, with. With music. A lot of it is determined by sort of seasons in life, moments in life.

I understand that. I mean, with me, I am a singer. Do you sing?

Only in the shower and only when the doors are shut so no one can hear me. Whatever. Whatever gifts I have singing ain't one of them.

Fair enough. How about this one then? Number three, what's your favorite Christmas tradition for your family?

I think several, but one is just hanging up ornaments on the Christmas tree because that brings back a lot of memories. Kids really like that. And also for. For me, because we have ornaments that my mom gave me when I was young.

So I think hanging up those ornaments is a little bit of a journey down memory lane. And a lot of those memories are nice ones, happy ones.

Do you continue to add ornaments to the tree every year?

Yeah, but we have most. Most of them are just a matter of getting them out of storage and. And then doing the ones that we've had. So we might add. But.

But I think we've kind of maxed out on that. And so now it's more hanging things both to make the tree look nice, but again, also to try and capture certain. Certain happy memories.

How about this? Or does your family. When do you put up the Tree or when is it allowable to put up the tree?

Well, in this, this year, we put it up right after Thanksgiving. The weekend after Thanksgiving. Our youngest son was home from college. Our daughter is living with us for a couple of years.

She works in the National Institutes of Health and she's in the process of applying for graduate school. And then we have a. Another son who's on the, on the West Coast. So two of them were. Were here.

So we figured, well, let's do it when at least we've got two of them here.

It's always good to have the kids around.

Yeah. Oh, yeah, sure.

Pieces. All right, here we go. Number four, what's your favorite Christmas food that you really don't get too many other times in the year?

You know, Christmas cookies, actually, that's. And with. Yeah, I'd say Christmas cookies are pretty high up there because we get to decorate them too.

Oh, you actually make them like you. You. Your family does.

Yeah, yeah. And then we are able to. To decorate them with, you know, different colors. And so that's a lot of fun, actually. It's.

The cookies are good, but making them is. Is fun as well.

It's just fun being with the family, I think.

Yeah.

Nobody know what the family. All right, here we go. Number five, how about this one?

Since you did talk a little bit about memories, what's your favorite Christmas memory that you can share?

You know, I would say actually the, the non Christian answers.

When I was a young kid watching Dallas Cowboys during Christmas Day win a playoff game because I was a huge Dallas Cowboy fan and, and it was actually a bonding experience, certainly for me and my brother, but also for. For my parents when they kind of got got into it too.

So that's the non Christian answer, I think was the Cowboys and Vikings and they played on a Christmas day.

Apart from that favorite Christmas memory, you know, there are moments that I have memories that I have when my parents would give us gifts and I would run and jump in their arms. And I knew that that brought them a lot of joy because. Because I had joy and I was. And I was happy.

And so that memory of me running and jumping and them grabbing me, you know, I was 8, 9 at the time, so it wasn't like I was an adult, in which case that wouldn't have worked so well. But that's, That's a nice memory.

I think those are the memories that we hold on of the Christmas has passed, where those family members are no longer around.

Yeah. Yeah. How about you? What's your favorite Christmas memory.

Oh my goodness. Well, my father died when I was a little boy and so I have an early memory of being at the house.

I think it was the Christmas before he passed and the whole.

His brothers and sisters would sit around and this is when back in the 70s when every brother bought for each other and their kids, which I don't know how they afforded to ever do that just because it's so expensive, but every kid got presents. And I just remember being with my parents and watching them hug and, and just loving that, you know. And he died not too long after that.

But I'm getting choked up now. You're asking me those questions and I'm getting all emotional, but I think that's it.

I saw a meme the other day on online where it had the family sitting around on the Thanksgiving table, but it had kind of the ghosts of family members past standing there, that kind of cloud of witnesses and, and it just reminded me that's, that's really what it's about. It's the quality of the relationships that we have. And, and, and that's what I love about the gospel.

It really does bring that out and talks about how to love God and love people really down to that. Which leads me to my next question.

As you're within the public arena but yet you are an evangelical Christian and you mentioned the non Christian version and the Christian version. So I'm curious on when did you. What's your story of faith? How did you come to fai?

Yeah, it, you know, I didn't grow up in a, in a Christian household. I don't have a memory of going to church as, as a kid my mom brought us, but I was young and I just don't have any, any real memories of, of that.

I started my journey of faith. I think it was between my junior and senior year in, in, in high school.

And I started it really coincident with my closest friend, fellow named Brad Shannon. Brad recently passed away.

For the first 25 years of my life, he was the person that I was closest to outside of family and, and I remember asking a lot of questions. My sister is five years older than I am, had come back for that summer. She was actually interning at a church.

And for reasons that are just unknown to me, these questions started to come. If there was a deep longing for faith to try and meet some need, I wasn't aware of it.

That could have been a factor, but at least consciously speaking that wasn't a driving force. And so Brad and I would, would talk about it. And then I got a notepad for my dad's notepad.

And I remember jotting down all of these questions and asking my sister who, who was extremely important in that, in that journey. Very intelligent and thoughtful, but didn't pretend to answer questions that, that she couldn't answer. So that started the, the, the, the journey.

And it was for me a long journey. I would say heavily intellectual for the early part, not easy. I remember telling.

Telling Patty that I felt like faith was sort of like sand in the gears for me. It just didn't come very easily.

And I also remember actually at a relatively early stage in that journey when I would read the words of Paul, I was slightly intimidated because I thought this was a person who was reaching the limits of language in terms of what he was expressing in terms of his love for Christ and God and how animating it was to his life. And I thought that's an impossible standard to meet. How do you fall in love with a figure that you don't see, that you just read about?

And even the gospels in many cases aren't beautiful poetry. It's just sort of straightforward history. And so part of it was like, how do you even enter into this?

And so, but there were key people along, along the journey for me.

When I went to University of Washington, I was at University Presbyterian Church and, and met a pastor who was head of student ministry at the time, Steve Haner. Steve later became President of InterVarsity in Columbia Theological Seminary.

And Steve was an important early figure in my life, really a model for me, person that I looked to and thought there's a individual of integrity who modeled, who modeled faith. I developed a trust with Steve. So even though when I, I didn't know him that well, I, I went to him.

I, I rem college, some, some issues that I was really struggling with. And it never shared with anybody else. But I had enough trust in Steve that I felt like I could go to him.

I came through, through an internship when I was a senior at University of Washington. And then for me, the cross became central.

That sounds a bit obvious if you're a person of the Christian faith, but I'll explain what I mean by it because I had a lot of these questions which I continue to have to this day and discuss them with theologians and pastors and others, but they were Often at least a quasi referendum on God's character. And I came to believe in the truth of the crucifixion and the Resurrection.

I actually did a college paper on that topic at University of Washington, which is not a Christian school, on the case war and against the Resurrection. So did a lot of research into that question. And I came to believe that it actually happened. It was the central event in human history.

And what happened is there was some dawning realization not only of the centrality of the cross, but that that was emblematic of God's character toward us for all time. That that was, in a sense, the climactic statement of God's love for us and devotion to us.

And so whatever the answer to those questions were, they were consistent with God's character that was demonstrated on the cross.

That didn't answer the questions of theodicy and, you know, a lot of other questions, but it did insulate, you know, God's character with these questions. So that was. That was an important moment.

And then I've just been hugely blessed and helped by, you know, countless individuals along the journey of, in all sorts of ways, who've leaned into my life, the life of my family, and modeled to me what it means to be Christians of integrity.

I mean, being a Christian and is difficult no matter where it is, but being in the public arena, especially the political arena, it can be very confusing for people very quickly. And yet that's where you've been. I mean, you've served for three presidential administrations, speechwriter, advisor, campaigns.

I mean, just reading your bio, politics has been a lot of your life. And of course, you've become much more of a writer in the last few years in that you've been.

I mean, you've always been a writer, but being more critical of administrations, especially when it comes to how evangelicals have received different administrations for a variety of different things that we've seen gone on. And I know you and I have communicated back and forth about the nihilism that we see within evangelicalism today.

I mean, where do you really see that being worked out within the church today?

Yeah, I mean, I think it's playing itself out in all sorts of ways and. And it's just not my observation from afar.

I've been really privileged to get to know a lot of pastors throughout my life and, you know, people that I've known for most of my life and others that I've met, you know, at various. Various points. And I actually did an essay a couple of years ago in the Atlantic on Sort of the fracturing of the evangelical church.

And it was quite striking to me. I don't know, it's probably 75%, 70% was reporting. And it was based on conversations with pastors primarily, but also theologians.

And to hear from them about the divisions within the church that was happening was pretty sobering. It wasn't a shock to me.

I mean, I went in with that thesis, but I think what, what did stand out to me is that nobody that I reached out to challenged the thesis of the growing divisions and acrimony within the CH church and number of people were basically saying, you don't know the half of, of it. So, so I think the church is in a, in a moment of, of deep, deep division.

I, I don't know whether nihilism is exactly the problem or, let me put it this way. I don't know a lot of Christians who would characterize themselves as nihilists.

That is the belief that truth doesn't exist and that life is sort of meaningless and, and you know, you can make up your own, your own narratives to fit whatever you want. I actually think that in many cases that's happening, but I think what's going on is not nihilism per se, not being embraced.

Because if you, if I asked or had conversations which I have with Christians who are embracing what I think are quasi nihilistic movements or conspiracy theories or untruths, they wouldn't say, yeah, it's not true, but, but, but I'm doing it anyway, because life has no meaning and there's no objective truth. They just have a different sources of authority that they're, that they're relying on.

And so they would come back at me and say, no, no, no, you're, you're wrong.

You know, the COVID vaccines are dangerous and hydroxychloroquine does cure it or whatever, or the election was stolen, or you can pick your narratives.

So I think what's happening is that they're embracing narratives that are false, but in many cases, the people who are embracing them don't know that they're false. And we live in an age of fractured information sources.

So you can basically find any website or any organization to validate what you already believe. In some respects, I suppose Travis is a little bit like hermeneutics in Scripture. You know, it's.

Shakespeare famously wrote the Merchant of Venice when his character said that the devil can quote scripture for his own purposes. And I think that's right.

You can justify almost anything that you want by selecting verses in Certain parts of the Bible, certain moments and say, you know, this is validated because X verse, to me, in the area of hermeneutics, it's not simply or even primarily knowing biblical verses. It's having the wisdom and discernment to know what verses apply in what context. What about the ethos under, you know, under. Underneath it?

How do you, how do you deal with people? How do you deal with your enemies? Do you look to 1st Samuel or Deuteronomy or Joshua, or do you look to the Sermon on the Mount?

When is compassion called for? When is anger called for? What kinds of anger do you know? Do, do, do do we look for?

So the older I've gotten, the less confident I am in, in, in people who simply are able to quote the Bible, and the more I've come to appreciate people who have the wisdom and discernment to try and figure out how it all applies.

You have made an observation that I think, as you said, you've talked to these different pastors that have noted the, the growing divisions that are there and recently, and I'm not sure if you've seen the book that came out in October called the Great Detourching, where they were examining what's gone on and their statistics were jolting, to say the least. Not to those who are in the arena, but to those who are kind of coming to this.

When you HEAR the numbers, 41 million people have disappeared from church over the last 25 years.

Right.

And there's. They cite a variety of different reasons. They cross the political spectrum and.

But part of that is a growing percentage are frustrated with the political rhetoric. And no longer can you avoid the political discussion in church. There's no. Just we're going to avoid it and move on. There is in the churches.

The pastors are finding themselves pastoring churches where there is a massive division and honestly, they're feeling a bit threatened.

Not only are they fearful of their own jobs and taking care of their family, but they know whatever stance that they will take, they will immediately be called out online or that group will leave their church and go to an affirmation of whatever political persuasion you want.

How do we help our people to really stay true to the word of God, the message of Jesus, but also to see the means that are being employed in our current political moment.

How do we help them to see the truth of Christ in the midst of that and to remain faithful, even if it means suffering politically and quite possibly in their own economic situation?

Yeah, it's a really, really good question. It's a very pressing question because I've had conversations with pastors on, on exactly that issue. And you're quite right.

I mean, churches are dividing, families are dividing in this political moment. I, I think in my own analysis, that's a product largely of the, of the Trump era.

But these divisions and polarization predated Donald Trump, I think, been certainly accelerated since then.

And I would, I'd even add to, to make the situation somewhat more complicated is that you can have people break in churches not only because a pastor directly mentions politics or political figures. I mean, that's sure to create divisions within a church, but there's even sort of subtext going on.

And so if, if a pastor is talking about welcoming the stranger and the sojourner and there are people who are very angry about immigration or illegal immigration, then they may say, look, you're trying to send a political message through these verses or through, through this exegesis on Scripture. So pastors actually try and avoid passages that aren't meant to send a political message could be heard that way.

Look, I, you know, I'm troubled, like a lot of people, that, that the means and the method that a lot of Christians or a lot of people who purport to be Christian are employing in politics and in our cultural and, and civic, civic life.

You know, on this, that de churching issue that you mentioned and, and the book that came out recently, there are a lot of different reasons on why young people are leaving the church.

But my own view is that one large reason is that a lot of young people see Christians, particularly evangelical Christians, white evangelicals who have rallied around and behind Donald Trump and the MAGA movement.

And he is a person, I think, obviously I could be wrong about this, and I'm happy to talk to people about it, talk to you about it, think that Donald Trump is a person who, who is a man of moral depravity in a lot of ways, a man of borderless corruptions and a grave threat to the country and to a lot of ideals that Christians sit for. And it's pretty simple, really.

And people spoke out, people of the Christian faith and said that if you have corrupt character, then you're not fit to, to be a political leader. And every other Day, it seemed like they took a figurative 2 by 4 upside the head of Bill Clinton.

So it doesn't really matter how the country's doing, whether the economy is doing well. You can't compartmentalize like that, set a moral tone for the country. They're examples to our children, to the rest of the country.

And we need people of high character to be our leaders. So fast forward now to the time in which Donald Trump is president. In many ways, Donald Trump makes Bill Clinton look like a boy scout.

And those same beliefs, those same convictions have not only been jettisoned, but, but the white evangelical movement is many respects the great defender of Donald Trump. And there are a lot of significant figures in the evangelical movement, white evangelical movement, who defend him day after day after day.

So if you're unbeliever, particularly young people and you're seeing it, should say, this is a moral freak show. I mean, who are these guys trying to kid? This was just a power play.

It's like morality matters when the other side messes up, but when our side messes up, our, our team screws up. We just apply a different, different standard. So that's one thing. And the other is Eugene Peterson had a phrase which he called the Jesus way.

There's the Jesus truth and the Jesus way. And, and Peterson said you can't pursue the Jesus truth without pursuing the Jesus way.

And what he meant by that is a sort of ethic, a way of dealing with people that should define Christians in public life and in life in, in general.

And the dehumanization of the opposition is just not something that is acceptable or allowable or something that is, is consistent with the ethic of, of Jesus or the, or the life of Jesus.

And if the Jesus way is at odds with the Jesus truth, and if evangelical Christians are defined by resentment, anger, fear, zealotry and those kind of things, then you know that's, that's going to create a problem, and we're seeing that problem play itself out.

If I, and I, I know you've heard this argument back and forth.

It's been played out ad nauseam and so many different households and conversations online, and they said, well, I know what I'm going to get with Clinton. I don't know what I'm going to get with Donald Trump. And then of course, he gets into office and he does play to the Base really well.

He gives them many what they have wanted. And some might say, well, look, now we have abortion. Roe v. Wade is being reversed, so the end is justified. The means.

How do we help people to see or respond to that in the midst of all that?

Yeah, I'd say several things about it.

They were basically saying Trump has flawed character. But on the other hand, we think his policies are going to advance moral good and do more to advance the ideals that we care about.

And so we have to weigh them, and different people will come out on how those scales fall. So I think that was a reasonable way to look at it.

Again, I think it was a mistake in choosing Trump, but that was a frame that I think could be least argued. I think it's just different now. I think we've had four years of Donald Trump and I think several things have happened.

One is that the malicious and malevolent nature of his character is pretty obvious. You know, it's too long a list to go over.

But he's been indicted four times, 91 counts, impeached twice, found liable of sexual assault, essentially rape and sexual harassment, hush money payments to, to a porn star, effort to try and overthrow the election, instigated a violent attack on the Capitol, peddling and lie after lie after lie, conspiracy theories. So this is a man who's, whose character is pretty clear by now.

So you no longer have, I think, the excuse of the rationalization of, well, maybe he'll be fine, maybe he'll be contained in control. That was really the argument. So that's one point I would make.

Second point I would make is that what's really troubled me most about Christians in the political arena isn't that they would defend Donald Trump on this or that set of policies, whether it's the Supreme Court nominees. And those were the ones in which, for a lot of conservative Christians, he was a success. And I think he was.

That's one of the areas where I think he did advance conservative cause. That's fine. People can, can make that argument. They can make the argument they're glad that he moved the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

But what's missing far, far, far too often is in while acknowledging the successes that they think he had to also speak out about the moral failures and the moral fallaws and the moral transgressions to say, look, I think the Supreme Court appointments were good, but I also think that being found guilty of sexual assault and sexual harassment and paying porn stars hush money because you're hiding an affair with your third wife while she's giving birth, and four indictments on 91 counts and the cruelty and the crudity of his, of his language and the lies that needs to be called out by people of faith too. You can do both things.

Which is when you do accommodation after accommodation after accommodation, you end up in a very different way.

And there's no way he would have done these things. But if he would do those things that you're stipulating, of course I would break with them.

How can I stand with a man that would do those kinds of things? But now they do stand with them. In fact, they're, they're more enthusiastic, not less enthusiastic than they were. And they have changed, not him.

And they've imbibed his ethics and his approach.

I had one recently email exchange with someone in the right wing ecosystem and they both basically said the same thing.

In an email exchange I had with him, they said, everything you say about Donald Trump is true. But what did the establishment guys give us? The establishment guys being McCain, Romney, Bush and others.

Goddess Barack Hussein Obama got to get the middle name in there. And so maybe what we have to do is we need a guy who's going to bring a gun to a cultural knife fight.

And if he's going to use some means and some methods that are, that make us uncomfortable, we wouldn't use. That's the price that it takes to win. Now, when Christians go there, they're giving up almost everything about their, their ethics.

Third thing I would say is that the years of Donald Trump are not the years of milk and honey that his supporters like to portray.

I mean, if you go through the objective criteria for the country, the metrics of the country in terms of how it's doing economically, in terms of crime, in terms of abortion and other things, we are not in a decidedly worse place now under Joe Biden than we were under Donald Trump. In fact, economically, you can certainly make the case that Biden's economic record, or at least the economy under Biden has been better.

But let's take Roe v. Wade. That's a really, really, really good, good issue. And that would be one in which Christians would say, yeah, we got rid of Roe v.

Wade, and we did. And I thought it was a terrible Supreme Court decision. Too often their Christians speak as if getting rid of Roe v.

Wade means getting rid of abortions.

If you look at the number of abortions in America, the high water mark, depending whether you're doing absolute numbers or rate and ratio, was late 80s, early 90s. In the early 90s, there were about 1.6, 1.7 million abortions.

They went down every year under presidents from the early 90s up until the end of the Obama presidency, there were fewer abortions in America at the end of Barack Obama's term than there were before Roe v. Wade. Now, I'm not saying cause and effect. I don't think it was because the policies of Obama or Bill Clinton, they went down under George W. Bush too.

But the reality is that the number of abortions went down at a greater rate under Democratic presidents than Republican presidents. And as we're seeing now, Roe v. Wade is actually an opinion that people liked.

And so you now have a lot of conservative states, Kansas and others, that are interstate constitution, putting the right to, to an abortion. And I believe the number of abortions, only time they've gone up since the, since the early 90s, was under Donald Trump.

So it is not as if these achievements under Trump was a great moral breakthrough. So, you know, I'm familiar with those arguments. I hear them. I think in many cases there are rationalization or justification.

People are scrambling because for a lot of different reasons, including reasons of culture and psychology, they've latched on to Trump. And so they have to construct arguments to try and justify that decision.

Because it's pretty obvious that there is a contradiction between people who claim to be followers of Jesus, who were extremely enthusiastic for Donald Trump, and the human mind tries to mitigate that kind of cognitive dissonance.

And I think, as you've already alluded to, and I've heard the same stats that you alluded to just a moment ago, where you mentioned that under certain Republicans, the abortion rate, well, I mean, you said it was going down, but it's the whole thing with guns, the same kind of idea when you have a president comes in that's anti gun, everyone buys guns and the gun rates go up. And it's almost as if it's the whole, I wouldn't know. Like one Paul says, I wouldn't know what sin was until the law said don't do it.

And then I awakened within me to want to do it and people react in fear.

But as we're going back to this, just for a moment, back to the mission and pastors that we're interacting with here as they're trying to figure out how to still navigate this. We all have our political opinions.

We can't afford, though, just to let it go on the, to let it go to the wayside or let people's opinions just stay where they're at any longer.

And especially as you mentioned, white evangelicalism, specifically, having pastored a multi ethnic church, that was the issue that I was constantly navigating, right?

I was constantly trying to deal with the white evangelicals who saw it just through their own isolated lens of what they considered to be biblical truth. They couldn't see the African Americans through the social justice lens in which many of them had come at it.

And yet I'm trying to show them that there are biblical principles on each side in some way, shape or form, but they've become distorted as they've gone back and forth. How do we help people to, how do we retain our Christian witness?

Or is there a possible way of gaining it back in the midst of this society when many people feel like it's been stolen from them from the get go for them? They're like, it doesn't matter what I say.

The political narrative that is being portrayed in the media has taken it from me and I'm the one that has to deal with the collateral damage of what's going on with the people around me. How do I help my people to see biblical truth when they themselves are more co opted by the media than they are by the Scripture itself?

Yeah, that is the urgent question that a lot of pastors are dealing with. I mean, the way that I've heard it, you probably heard the same thing.

Their congregants are watching 15 or 20 hours a week of cable television and that's shaping their mind and sensibilities because churches get them for, you know, if you're lucky, you get them every Sunday, maybe a Sunday school class and if you're really committed members, you know, every other week for a covenant group or whatever, the name that's being being used at the time. And so in terms of the catechesis, the shaping of those sensibilities, the world is shaping it. That, that is the problem.

I mean basically what's happening is, is you've got people who are, and this is true on the left and the right and even to some extent people in between, that their attitudes, their dispositions are, are inflamed and they, you know what, what I've learned, it's more vivid now than in the past. I've always known that this, that the situation existed, but it's, it's more pronounced and deeper than I realize.

And that is the degree, honestly, Travis, that I, that I think faith is secondary for a lot of people who believe in their life, that it's primary.

There's, if you spoke to a person who's, who's a genuine Christian, they would tell you that being faithful to Jesus and walking with integrity in the Christian faith is the most important thing in terms of mind and soul and spirit. So if you gave them Sony pentathol and said what's most important to you, they would say their faith.

But I think in practice what happens is that we're all shaped by countless things in our lives, our family of origin, the friends we know, the institutions we attended, the schools that we went to, the communities that we're a part of.

Now, what we watch, the people who affirm us, the people who, who irritate us, there are cultural factors, there are psychological factors, their life experiences. And those shape who we are. And what we do is we then come and we mold the faith to fit who we are and what those pre existing views are.

We think what we're doing is we're being faithful to the Bible. In fact, what we're doing is we're being faithful to some ideology, some cultural shaping event.

And then as we were talking about earlier, you take verses and scripture and ratify what you already believe. So it's kind of like a jet fuel to these already sort of intense and deeply held beliefs.

So how do you, if that's the case, you know, how do you undo that?

I mean that's, that's the $64,000 question for churches and for pastors, right, which is ultimately how do you shape, you know, to use a Jonathan Edwards phrase, the affections of the heart? How do you fall more in love with Jesus?

How do you let him shape the kind of person you are, the prism through which you see the world rather than, than the other way around? You know, different pastors will have different ways of doing it depending on what their skill sets are.

Ultimately, I think what you have to do is you have to get people to fall more in love with Jesus. You've got to get people to model grace. You have to probably reset what the purpose of dialogue and conversation is, which is not victory, but truth.

There's, there's a story that, that C.S. lewis and Owen Barfield had, which I find admirable and impressive.

Lewis and Barfield were part of the Inklings, the great literary group in the middle part of the 20th century in England. CS Lewis was the key figure there, but so was JRR Tolkien and Charles Williams and others. And Owen Barfield was part of that as a poet philosopher.

And Lewis and Barfield were close. I think the first book that Lewis ever dedicated was to Owen Barfield.

And I think what Lewis said is that Barfield was his first and greatest teacher. But Lewis and Owen Barfield had deep disagreements on pretty esoteric matters of faith. So they would debate.

And in Surprised by Joy Lewis's autobiography, he talks about these conversations and debates with, with Owen Barfield. He said, Barfield and I would go at it hammer and tong late into the night.

You could begin to, to feel and absorb the power of the other person's blows and. And arguments. And almost unconsciously, you would begin to absorb what they were. What was interesting to me and.

And what I think we need to recapture as.

As people of faith is that Barfield and Lewis shared their relationship in large part, not totally, but in large part because they saw things differently and they felt like that they were better because they had each other in their lives. And Barfield would later say that Lewis and I never debated for victory. We debated for truth.

That's an entirely different way to approach a conversation, Whether it's a conversation about theology or hermeneutics or politics or anything else, which is when we engage with each other, how can we help each other to move somewhat closer to the truth and reality of things. None of us sees anything like the full measure of truth. We all have our blind spots. We're all products of those factors we talked about earlier.

So the question is, how do we do it?

So if the church could model that, you know, it would help the idea of trying to teach what human anthropology is, which is everybody is created in the image of God, and therefore dehumanization is not. Is not allowable. What it means to be instruments of grace and reconciliation and to heal a broken world.

And that can happen through the pulpit, it can happen through Sunday school classes, but it also happens just in individual lives.

When you get to know people, their journey, their struggles, their hopes, their disappointments, the wounds that they've had over their life, and when you're able to connect with people on that level, that, in my experience, opens up all sorts of other conversations.

What doesn't work in theology or politics, as a general matter, is if I come in and say, you know, Travis, your hermeneutics are wrong, and here are the eight reasons why. And I just try and overwhelm you, you know, mow you over with. With arguments.

What's going to happen is to you is the same thing that would happen to me if you did that to me, which is you get defensive, you get angry, you'd want to lash out. Certain element of pride comes in. This person is trying to bully me.

I just had these beliefs, so back off, you know, so just trying to overwhelm people with arguments and scolding them doesn't always work.

Now, that doesn't mean that at certain key moments in the life of a church or a life of a nation that you don't have people speak hard truths or prophetic truths, right? There's. There's obviously a whole history of the importance of the prophet. Or you can look through figures like Martin Luther King Jr.

Who both championed love, but also spoke some very hard truths for Christians who were supporting segregation. So, you know, I think that that's what has to. Has to happen.

And just one other thing I'll say about this is, you know, pastors also have to determine at what point do they feel like they need to speak out, not necessarily from the pulpit, but maybe in their own name at a key moral moment in the life of a church or life of a country.

For example, I've asked a lot of pastors, and I'm not necessarily recommending that they speak out now, you know, in terms of politics, because I know it can divide a church. And I know that if.

If it's perceived that you're saying something negative or positive for Donald Trump on one Sunday, then the next Sunday when you talk about or. Or to give a Sermon on Philippians 2, the congregation may tune you out.

Having said that, I've asked pastors who don't want to speak out at this moment, are you glad that there were Christian pastors and ministers who spoke out during the segregation and slavery?

And almost to a person, they say yes, it would be a shame to look back and say at this moment when blacks were being dehumanized, enslaved, segregated, looked down upon because of the color of their skin, we had nothing to say. We were too afraid about dividing our congregation, that we decided we were going to not name it.

And then on the, really, on the, on the further extreme, you know, is Dietrich Bonhoeffer, right? The German confessional church, the vast majority of German Christians in Nazi Germany sided with the Nazi regime. Bonhoeffer, as you know, said no.

And there were small group that spoke out. He ended up losing his life. I'm not saying that we're at a Bonhoeffer moment and that the country is near the Nazi regime.

I'm just saying that there's a spectrum here. And my impulse throughout my entire life is pastors should stay out of politics.

First thing that I ever had published in my life was trying to warn Christians from conflating politics and a political agenda with. With Christianity. So that's very much my disposition.

But I do think that we, as followers of Christ, because we feel like we have something to say morally and in the public square at key moments, need to be alert and ask ourselves what's required of us as followers of JEs as truth tellers, as people who stand for a certain kind of, you know, moral order. Individual pastors will obviously Answer that depending on their facts and circumstances and what their conscience tells them.

How do you do politics? Or maybe the better question is, how does the political arena work its way into and out of your life?

As a rule, I believe the believers who are serious about their faith are trying to do the right thing when it comes to politics and the causes and candidates that they support. Most of us are willing to admit that there are things about the candidates and parties we vote for that we don't like.

I can't tell you how many times that I've heard that everyone does some kind of moral calculus to decide how we vote. We don't always come to the same conclusion because the way that we are doing the math, if you will, differs.

Regardless of whether you agree with Pete on everything that he said or the positions that he takes when it comes to Donald Trump or any number of policy issues, several aspects really struck out to me about the way we enter the political sphere. As Christians, our job is to be like Christ. It's our calling. Pete used the Eugene Peterson language of Jesus truth matching Jesus way.

Those two things aren't separate for the Christian, nor can they be. And I understand that we live in a sinful world world that the ideal is rarely in front of us. Theologians call it orthodoxy versus orthopraxy.

We need both what we believe and what we do. Now our editor says that there are two sides of the same coin, and you can't have a coin without them both.

We're all bent toward one side or the other, and that's fine. But we have to recognize the value of both sides. We fall into a dangerous error when we don't. And as Christians, we don't have that option.

Another thing that struck me was the question of what we are letting form us. The reality is that we're formed by lots of things. There's no way around it. People are complicated. Culture is complicated.

Our faith can be complicated. Who are the voices that we are letting shape us? Is it the Scripture? Is it the way of Jesus, the thing that we are allowing to shape us most?

Or are we letting other things like our background or fear or pet issues have an outsized influence? Or?

Or are we taking our modern political issues and reading them back into the Scripture itself and not allowing the Scripture in its entirety speak to us? We all need to ask this question, regardless of our political affiliation.

It's easy to let our own background become the thing that defines how we look at the Bible.

That's why we've had such guests on here Like Randy Richards, who wrote Misreading the Bible through Western eyes or misreading the Bible through individualism eyes. We cannot let the Bible be seen in the way we want it to be seen.

We have to let the Bible speak to us in its entirety, not let our culture dictate what the Bible says. It's easy to let our background become the thing that defines how we look at the Bible.

And we don't have to jettison who we are, but we do have to be willing to question our assumptions to make sure that we are actually following what God's Word says and not making it say what we want it to say. That's the real danger. I don't care who it is. I don't care what's going on politically at the time.

The Word of God has to be the Word of God no matter what. It's one of the reasons why we like to hear from the church around the world.

We all have blind spots and sometimes what others see can really help us. And I know that everyone wants to go to the Word of God. The question is not whether or not we go to the Word of God. That's a no brainer.

We of course go to the Word of God as followers of Jesus.

The question is, are we willing to skip over portions of the Word of God or rationalize them away or say that they're not relevant or they're not important, or this issue is more important than that issue? These are questions that we have to wrestle with.

Finally, I really appreciate the illustration of Lewis and Barfield, two men who are very good friends who often disagreed significantly. But their goal in debating was not so much winning as to get to the truth. That's it. Truth is our friend. All truth is God's truth.

Too often in today's politics, it's all about winning at all costs. And then we say that we stand for truth as we use devious methods in order to bring about that truth. Truth goes out the window. Let's get honest here.

Ethics goes out the window today. It's about pragmatism. It's not about ethics. It's about pragmatism. The lesser of two evils, right?

These are the rationales that we come and we are not supposed to follow that. We're supposed to follow the Word of God. And when we go to the lowest common denominator, we lose our testimony.

So does the need to reason to believe that we represent God. If we compartmentalize what we believe in this arena, we're not following Jesus.

No matter what party or politician we vote for, no matter what the results may be. As Christians, we have a responsibility to represent our king, to not only proclaim his message, but to live by his ways.

I know some will think that's hopelessly naive, that you can't win that way. But as Pete said, that betrays the hard truth that our faith isn't primary. Something else is.

Yes, we should participate politically, but we need to do so differently. We need to show that we are following God first. We need to be willing to lose in the short term, to gain in the long term.

Or do we not really believe that God is in control? The entire book of Daniel is about showing that God was in control when it looked like he was not. The people of God were carted off into exile.

Daniel and his friends faced indoctrination and potential death.

They were groomed from a young age to become Babylonians, pagans, to become people who looked and acted and thought like the world that they had been brought into. But they held firm and it cost them.

But over time, Daniel, because of his faithfulness, because he was unwilling to compromise, he was put in a position to influence and speak truth to some of the most powerful men in the world. And that had repercussions for generations. It wasn't safe. It wasn't always comfortable, but it was right.

Next time, we continue the conversation with Pete. Until then, please check us out online at any of our social media pages. I want to thank our Apollo's water team for helping us to water the world.

This is Travis Michael Fleming signing off from Apollo's Water. Stay watered, everybody.