In this timely episode of the Pivot Podcast, hosts Dr. Alicia Granholm and the Rev. Dr. Dwight Zscheile tackle the challenging intersection of faith and politics with the Rev. Dr. Anthony Bateza, a Luther scholar and expert in Christian ethics. As the United States faces a divisive election season, Anthony offers a grounding historical perspective and practical wisdom for church leaders navigating these turbulent waters.

Explore how churches can foster meaningful political dialogue without falling into partisan traps. Discover the concept of affective polarization and its impact on congregations. Learn how to use Scripture creatively in addressing current issues and avoid common ethical pitfalls in political engagement. Anthony's insights, rooted in Luther's political theology, provide a roadmap for faithful civic participation that balances conviction with compassion.

Whether you're a pastor, lay leader, or engaged congregant, this episode offers valuable guidance on living out your faith in the public square. Join us for a conversation that will challenge and inspire you to approach politics with both biblical wisdom and neighborly love.

SHOW NOTES: 

• Rev. Dr. Anthony Bateza's Faith+Lead Academy course, Positions: Thinking Theologically About Politics
• The Alban Institute at Duke Divinity School
• Anthony Bateza’s page: https://www.stolaf.edu/profile/bateza
• Luther’s “The Freedom of a Christian”

Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/gIy0-ftac8o

Mentioned in this episode:

Q4 Webinar: The Path from “I” to “We”: Extending Christian Community to the Neighborhood

Anthony Bateza: As I am careening through middle age, I notice myself trying to, like, check my memories about what it was like when I was younger or how things used to be. So there's a tendency, I think, to automatically think that the time right now is radically different than times in the past, but that my own childhood be that American politics 20, 50 or 150 years ago. Of course, if we take a step back, we go, well, wait a second. We had, you know, American Revolution, we had various wars. We had the Civil War to end slavery. We had reconstruction up and down Jim Crow laws. So I think we take a step back and go, okay, wait a second. This is a very difficult time, and it certainly feels very difficult. But across the nation's history, which is even a small snapshot of history more broadly, um, we've been here and worse before and probably will be again. So there's some kind of reality check, some grounding in that.

Alicia Granholm: Hello everyone, and welcome to the Pivot podcast, where we explore how the church can faithfully navigate a changing world. I am Alicia Granholm and I am joined by Dwight Zscheile.

Dwight Zscheile: We live in a time when navigating change faithfully is no easy thing. America's lurching through a tumultuous election season right now, as we all know, and there are powerful forces fragmenting and tearing apart American society. What does it mean to follow Jesus and to help others do so in such a time as this? One of the key pivots we believe the church needs to make today is the shift in focus from attracting and maintaining members of an institution to forming disciples or apprentices of Jesus and His way. And that's why we are so excited to welcome today the Reverend Doctor Anthony Bateza to the Pivot podcast. Doctor Bateza is the associate professor of religion at Saint Olaf College, Saint Olaf. I'm going to do that over. Doctor Bettiza is associate professor of religion at Saint Olaf College, where he specializes in Martin Luther moral theology and Christian ethics, and he's also a visiting professor here at Luther Seminary. Welcome, Anthony.

Anthony Bateza: Thank you. It's an honor to be here. It's great.

Alicia Granholm: Yeah. We're so happy to have you. Okay, Anthony, can you start by telling us a little bit about yourself and how you became interested in theology and ethics?

Anthony Bateza: Yeah, no. It's great. Um, so I teach down at Saint Olaf as my full time job, even though I'm doing some visiting assistant teaching here at the seminary these days. Um, but originally I grew up down in Iowa. Uh, got brought into the Lutheran church through campus ministry and kind of went into parish ministry for a little bit and then back for PhD into the academic work. Um, I got into the academic work, particularly like moral theology and Christian ethics questions driven by an innate bookishness. Um, that was always kind of there, just a love for learning and reading and discussing more, but also a sense that in parish life and my own life, trying to find resources to help me think about what it means to be morally formed, to be formed as a Christian, that Lutherans, I think, had a lot of good practices but don't always have the vocabulary, the concepts, the theology to think through that a little bit more, a little bit more deeply. Um, and so I was drawn back into that and kind of found my home somewhere in the middle of kind of moral theology and political theology, questions about what we do, is it right or wrong, how we're formed to be the kind of people that we are and what we can learn from and contribute to the political arenas that we're in, whether that's local, state, or global.

Dwight Zscheile: So, um, we're excited to have you talk with us today specifically about navigating some of that in this moment. What do you see right now if you look at kind of the American landscape, and I know many of our listeners and watchers are trying to lead congregations through this kind of rocky season, you know, exciting season, we might say, of American politics. But but talk to us a bit about how you see that intersection of faith and politics playing out in this current moment in American life.

Anthony Bateza: Yeah, yeah, I know, I recognize that and appreciate that challenge. There's that old saying, I think, from the Albany Institute, it's a good time to be at the church or the phrase, you know, for such a time as this that can either be inspiring or a hard reality check where it's hard to know, like, is this a good time to be the church because it's more challenging? Couldn't I have less challenging times and still be pretty good at being the church? Right. Um, so yeah, I think there's that sort of tension that a lot of us are wrestling with, with in the pews, behind pulpits or in all kinds of places and our churches and institutions. Um, I think I come at this from a trying to take a bit of a historical step back. When I look around the world today, um, both through my training and through my disposition. Um, as I am careening through middle age. Uh, I notice myself trying to, like, check my memories about what it was like when I was younger or how things used to be. So there's a tendency, I think, to automatically think that the time right now is radically different than times in the past. Be that my own childhood, be that American politics 20, 50 or 150 years ago. Of course, if we take a step back, we go, well, wait a second. We had, you know, American Revolution, we had various wars. We had the Civil War to end slavery. We had reconstruction up and and down Jim Crow laws. So I think we take a step back and go, okay, wait a second. This is a very difficult time, and it certainly feels very difficult. But across the nation's history, which is even a small snapshot of history more broadly, um, we've been here and worse before and probably will be again. So there's some kind of reality checks, some grounding in that. What I think is true, and I think that the data and the sociological types would support this is that we are feeling more affective polarization right now. By that, I mean, it's not just that we have tensions. We have always had those not just disagreements, not just outright battles. We've had all of that before. What's interesting right now, or has been a shift recently, folks would say, is in our feelings about people on the other side of a political party, of a candidate, of an issue that, by and large, we feel much more strongly, much more quickly about folks who we detect or believe were on the other side of an issue, and that we're eager to somehow defeat or expel or protect ourselves from those people. There's this real kind of attempt to cut people off, and that we're going to somehow purify whatever group we're part of, whatever candidate or issue we're standing behind, and that the other person is the enemy. Um, either because they're malicious or because they're stupid. Uh, and we kind of fall into those two traps, both at the same time. We sort of accuse a person of being somehow an idiot, but also a mastermind. Um, and this happens back and forth all over the place. Uh, and so coherence is a bit of a problem there. Um, as it usually is with us. Um, so yeah, in that sense, it's an interesting time, sort of. How do you get at, um, not just the newness of these tensions and conflicts, but the real in your heart feeling that this is a time where the soul of the nation is at risk and the other person is demonic.

Dwight Zscheile: So I'm curious on that. Use the word soul, which is, I think, important because it seems like there's, um, one way to read what's going on is a kind of displaced spirituality playing itself out in the political sphere, since religion is less, um, predominant in the cultural space than maybe it was several generations ago. Um, and more in the background is a more secularized society. And so. So, um, what how how do you see that going on? Do you have a sense of there being a kind of, um, you know, a spiritual like displacement in some of this?

Anthony Bateza: Yeah. No, that's a great question. I know a lot of sharper minds than I have thought a lot about this question about the sort of the lack of attachment to religion in particular, or to other people through civic organizations and community connections and people sort of grabbing on to something. Right? It's going to be politics. It's going to be this particular issue that's going to give me a sense of identity, give me a sense of security, and becomes kind of the new, quote unquote, religion for people. I think there are some truth to that. Right? I mean, Luther always warned us about where we put our hearts, uh, in the sense that, you know, our faith is that which we trust and that which we're investing all of our trust in. And so in this sense that we're investing lots of trust in a politician to win or not win, to do well in a debate or not, to step away and let somebody else who's going to win step in. We're heavily invested in sort of the news alerts and the outcomes of these small skirmishes. And so in that sense, yeah, I think there's probably something there to our having almost a religious connection to our political leaders and our political situation at the same time. Again, doing my like, step back historical kind of move. Um, I'm really interested, for example, in Martin Luther and the reformers reaction to the German Peasants War, which took place in 1524 1525. What do we see there? Well, we see lots of religion, right? There's plenty of religion all over the place. Plenty of churches, plenty of debates about religion and spirituality and pilgrimages and religion is all over. And yet there are deep economic divides, deep political divides, and religion is mixed into all of that. Um, Luther took it kind of personally, uh, and reacted in ways that were sometimes justifiable, other times most certainly not and horrendous. But in his complicated reaction to these Germans who were gathering and then rioting and then going to war, going to battle against the economic conditions they faced, um, they saw in Luther somebody who was going to help give them some guidance or at least would support them from afar. Why? Well, he wrote freedom of a Christian, and it was printed over and over again. And they thought, yeah, we we are free in Christ. Yeah. I never thought of that before. But Christ sets us free. We should be free from our feudal lords. We should be free from these new taxes and new burdens they're placing on us. And Luther took a stand against the Pope and against the Empire. And they saw that. And he wrote about it sort of boldly with this sort of sense of confidence. And they were like, yeah, we should do that too. And so in that moment, people who had complained in the past, who had rioted in the past, who had gone into battle in the past, primarily for sort of legal and economic issues brought into their debate religion and said, now we're going to gather as God's people, as God's army, as God's militia. ET cetera. ET cetera. And so lots of religion, but also lots of conflict, lots of battle, lots of war. And again, time and time again, when we look back, we can see religion is always there. When there are conflicts, when there are battles. I feel like a more helpful way for us. Maybe to approach this is not to just ask is religion receding and something else stepping into its place in the abstract, but ask, where is religion in the midst of these conflicts? And where are we as people of faith? And I fear is that there's still lots of religion, but not a lot of people of good faith caring, forward religious ideas that to me are true, that are good, that are building up the body both religiously and politically. There's a lot of quasi religious or dangerous religious ideas, be it Christian nationalism or be it a tax on religious institutions and religious.

Alicia Granholm: Anthony, I really appreciate that. And I'm curious, what what do you believe, uh, a faithful church's response or. Right, a faithful faith community's response should be, um, in terms of public discourse during election seasons.

Anthony Bateza: Yeah. Boy. That's great. Um, so I'll take a step back again. Um, this is really a good question for our time right now, obviously, as we're looking ahead to the election. Um, but I recall my first call experience when I was first in a congregation. I served out in metropolitan New York back in 2006 to 2010. I remember one of the lessons that was given to us by then Bishop Steve Bowman, about his experience in New York in September 11th, 2001, and the months and years afterwards. Folks would say, you know, if you weren't there before September 11th, you weren't there in the firehouse and the police station and the community and the hospital. If you weren't there in the community before this tragedy happened, it was real hard and real suspicious if you were trying to get in there afterwards. Right. It just sort of raised questions. And you didn't have the relationships, you didn't have the connections kind of already built up in you. So one thing I think we need to be thinking about is not just how do we prepare for November of 2024, but how are we preparing for 2028 and midterms in 2026 and all the elections in between? By thinking about how our congregations places where people hopefully have earned and can sustain a little more trust than they certainly can in the comment section on social media or on the New York Times or the post or the Journal. Um, how are these places where we can constantly be having discussions that are political that might seem a challenging or be not political at all, kind of reframing both of those things to say we're going to have conversations that we know are already hard on topics that are already difficult. And at the same time, we're going to pivot and think about how is it things we take for granted, like supporting our food pantry, like reaching out to neighbors and folks who are different than us linguistically, culturally, whatever? How are those also kind of political moves? And look at the scriptures that same way. Look at our tradition in that same way to kind of constantly be thinking about where is the political already there in ways that people can handle discussing, in ways that will get us out of thinking of the political just as a ballot box, a particular candidate kind of thing. Mhm.

Dwight Zscheile: Well, so it seems like for local churches they're in leaders. There's a couple of temptations. One is to just say I'm not going to engage political stuff at all and pretend this isn't happening. Right. Which isn't necessarily the most helpful. But another temptation is to be really partisan and to say, okay, there is a, you know, one moral, morally righteous side to this, and we're all going to be all in on that and thus silencing people who might have different political views or just pushing them out entirely, no matter what version that is left to right. Um, so what are some practices that local churches and their leaders might put into place that, um, that do what you're describing? You know, that that are trust building that are deepening connections with the neighborhood, but are not falling into either of those two ditches.

Anthony Bateza: Yeah, yeah. Well, I want to add a third ditch, actually. Great. Um, and this has been again, this is more of my sort of anecdotal experience sitting in pews and moving around congregations. Um, I think we have those extremes of people sort of taking hardline stances in different directions, coming at us a lot. Um, my experience has been most of the time I feel like I'm in the middle ditch where there's not enough political conversation or there's something that people think is political, but it seems kind of mild and kind of tepid. And people are using words like in a euphemistic sort of talking around the issue sort of way. That usually leaves me feeling a little bit more demoralized, demoralized than anything else. And so, yeah, there was an old, um, Doctor Ruth just died recently. I think it was either her or like a Dear Abby column I remember reading years ago. Uh, this is a little risque, but we'll give it a shot for the podcast listeners. Um, she essentially said that people write in to me to ask about sex a lot, and their complaints always fall into one of two categories too much or not enough. Um, and that stuck with me for decades now, just because I was like, ooh, yeah. Um, and it also sort of, I think, again, resonates with my experience of political conversations and some of the stuff that you were touching on and that people either say there's too much of it or I want more of it, and there's different kinds of issues people are bringing to it. Um, I would say that that's always going to be the case to some extent. People are probably always going to want a little bit more, a little bit less, depending on the issue, but depending on their mood, depending how they're getting fed or not getting fed. Other places. Um, I it's also easier to sometimes yell at your pastors or your church council or your elders than it is other places. It's like when kids come home from school and they've been great for like five hours and they just, like, vomit up all of their emotions.

Alicia Granholm: My daily experience.

Anthony Bateza: I also, I'm a parent and have been a child and so it's come full circle. Um, so there's something I think about congregations and church communities that sometimes invite that kind of people reacting very strongly. And as I tell myself, when that's happening with my children, maybe that's a sign of strength. Maybe that's a sign that they feel this is a safe enough place that they can actually share something here that maybe they can't when they're with their family, when they're with their coworkers, when they're with their neighbors in front of the mailbox. So to go in with that kind of attitude, perhaps, um, and also, I think what's been really effective in my own life, what I've seen others do and try to do myself, is not talk in abstractions about issues. Um, certainly get away from endorsing candidates. That's not our job as the church by any stretch of the imagination. Although the jumps between like issues and candidates can be pretty easy to make. Um, so, but not overtly or explicitly endorsing candidates and that sort of thing. Um, but again, not being abstract and sharing specific particular stories about your own experiences or the experiences others have shared with you in ways that you can do that are appropriate. Um, just don't just tell me what you think about immigration. Tell me about your experiences with immigrants. Um, if you haven't had any, tell me about that and what you think about that and what that means about your perspective and how maybe you're working to educate yourself, um, to expand your circle of relationships, either through reading or ideally through flesh and blood people and contact out in the community or beyond. Um, so I think those kinds of moves towards story, towards narrative, towards experience, um, at least turn down the temperature of, you know, here's the issue. I'm ready with my talking points, my bullets that I'm going to load up and start firing. Um, about the issue. And instead I have to listen to you talk about parents and children and experiences in school and experiences at the grocery store, and finding the right spices for your recipes and kinds of things we all can relate to. Um, I'll just add, we recently did this. We took a little group for a project that I was a part of. We did a couple of days of Sacred Sites tours. Um, we did one day of tours looking at sort of Dakota sites to Fort Snelling and reviewing the history of the people, uh, the indigenous Native American peoples. And then we did another day. We went to some of the congregations that were Norwegian and were involved in the founding of Saint Olaf and learning about their histories and their stories and just hearing those two stories, those two experiences back to back, uh, people had amazing sort of reflections and observations about what people were paying attention to, what kind of historical markers were in the minds of the folks in these different communities who were ostensibly living side by side in the same moment in time, but were having radically different experiences, radically different senses of what counts as history, who they're oppressed by, what they're trying to fight for, what they're living for. Um, so, yeah, just getting a sense of our own history sometimes and sort of the political weight of those and sharing those stories. If you don't have current ones, what brought your people to where they are? And if you don't know, why don't you know? And that begins to open the door to having those kinds of conversations about today and people who are facing the same situations. Mhm. Mhm.

Alicia Granholm: Yeah I love that. Um, are there ways that you think, uh, thinking about Luther specifically that his political theology could help us navigate political seasons like these? Yeah.

Anthony Bateza: Yeah. Um, I most certainly. Right. I think that Luther's political theology and his theology more broadly are very useful, and his personal examples and experiences are useful, I would say, both as positive and negative examples. So theologically, I'll say this, uh, Luther, as we all know, radically insists over and over again with no breaths ever taken, that our identity, that our dignity, that our personhood is ultimately and always grounded in and returning to God. And so, whatever way I think of evaluating myself, it's my education, my clothing, my economic status, my immigration or legal status, political party, whatever it is, all of it has to be in some way related to and not determining my my dignity and worth. My dignity and worth are determined by God. Now, that said, Luther doesn't think that all those things are unimportant. And so he does recognize that we learn about ourselves. You learn about what good relationships look like, what love looks like, what proclamation looks like in these very real and embodied relationships of family and friend, economics and politics. And so he's trying to sort of, I think, manage that both and kind of tension of wanting to recognize there's something more to us than the particularities of our lives. And at the same time, those particularities of our lives are deeply important and deeply significant. I also love the way that Luther sort of falls into controversy, kind of, you know, backwards, unintentionally. Um, merely by criticizing a, you know, not the most important practice of his time. Right. So they're selling indulgences. They hadn't sold indulgences that often. They were trying a new thing, trying to raise some money for Saint Peter's and to pay off some debts and other historical issues going on there. And Luther is critical of it, and he's critical of it because that's his job as he's a professor. He's supposed to think about theology and Bible, and so he's just doing that, just doing his sort of mundane, boring job in a backwater sort of corner of the Holy Roman Empire, just out in the woods, away from any centers of power. Uh, quite forgettable. And then look where it got him. So I think there's something deeply inspiring about this in our lives as people of faith and people of politics, that sometimes just paying attention to very small things can sort of start to unravel what seems like a pretty solid structure or a pretty well bound piece of cloth falls apart as you keep sort of tugging at just one little loose string. And so I think, as we're encouraged politically to take big stands sometimes on just giant banner issues, instead stepping back and saying, well, I'm a little more interested in just like this little issue. Like I really want to focus on what what are housing prices like? Like in my area, in my town, not sort of inflation or the mortgage crisis across the country or the world, but like, why is it folks can't get a place to rent on these three blocks in my neighborhood and kind of start picking at that? And suddenly you might find that there are deeper issues that you're exposed to, challenges you encounter, and opportunities you encounter to engage politically with people of good faith and people of different faiths and no faith in your community. So Luther did that. Um, and so that gives me some peace of mind of saying, I don't need to have all the answers figured out. I don't need to have, like, a roadmap to success for how to address political or religious issues. Sometimes just putting your finger on one thing can be enough. Um, I also think that Luther's attention to our sort of symbol, or our simultaneously sinners and saints kind of identity is really important and gets us out of that desire to want to demonize the other quite so quickly, or to demonize ourselves quite so quickly. Um, so you have this sense that you're never going to be perfect. That's not an excuse not to do something. And so you, like Adam has to be, you know, drowned in baptismal waters every day. So do I. And so you get up, you try again. So if you said something rude to your uncle at Thanksgiving that you feel like you shouldn't have said, then the next day, maybe you apologize, you try something else. If you kept quiet when your uncle said something offensive, the next time, maybe you speak up, give him a call or send an email and try to muster a little courage to put yourself out there. So those are the kinds of daily challenges I think Luther gives us and the kind of permission to keep trying and failing and trying again, knowing that God's love is behind all this.

Dwight Zscheile: So let's talk a bit about the role of Scripture in these kinds of political engagements in the life of a congregation. Again, it's easy, it seems like, with Scripture also to fall into various ditches in how it's used or misused. What would you say to that?

Anthony Bateza: I think that's great. Um, obviously Lutherans, at least we declare a love of Scripture. Um, we try to live out, um, again, like many of our things, where it's easier to declare, um, sometimes than it is to embody. I'll own that for myself as well, in my own body and my own my own life. Um, so yes, I think that we have a real opportunity because of just the care and attention that Luther and Lutherans like to apply to reading Scripture, to interpreting Scripture. One of the things I love about the way Luther approaches Scripture that I think we lose sometimes is he has almost kind of a Jewish midrashic approach to Scripture. By that I mean, he doesn't always sort of come in and say, this text means this. Sometimes he does, sometimes he pounds the table, sometimes he says, it has to mean this, and that's fine. But other times when he's giving lectures, when he's sort of musing about things, he'll offer up a variety of interpretations. Maybe Abraham was going through this. Maybe it was this. Here's a third idea I just had. You know, just kind of spin those out for his audience, for his listeners and for himself as he's kind of just chewing on the text and letting it work on him in that kind of out loud, thinking with other people back and forth. I think that is often missing in debates about what Scripture says or doesn't say. Um, we're real tempted to line up a series of proof texts to sort of pound on the table and say, no, no, I've got it. Jesus meant this. Abraham meant this, Moses meant this. I've got it all worked out. And that's the end of the story and said to say, well, maybe we're better off if I toss out some different meanings to kind of let folks offer up and maybe even don't toss out any meanings that others offer, their interpretation, their read, where they're coming from. Um, I do this sometimes in the classroom whenever I can, with students, um, trying to think about stories in ways that are against our first instincts. So we encounter the story of Ruth, for example, Ruth and Naomi. On one hand, it's a story about love and steadfast dedication. On the other hand, it's sort of a troubling story sometimes about a moabite woman who was called a moabite many times and then isn't a moabite anymore. What happened to her Moabite ness? Was she accepted because she took on the ways, the culture, the rules, and the norms of the Tribe of Benjamin or not? Um, that I have students pivot and look at the Book of Ezra. Ezra has this sort of denunciation of intermarriage. Um, these wives and these children of intermarriage between Jewish and arguably non-Jewish. Although it's debatable, um, folks of the land are broken up and dissolved and people are families are, you know, divided and sent away. And our first reaction, I think often is like, oh, this seems really heavy and really horrible. And we could imagine that happening today and thinking that would be a pretty bad and pretty traumatic thing. And I think, well, what if you are a very small population living in the midst of an empire where you felt that your language, that your religion, that your culture, that your way of life was constantly threatened, that you had been punished by God, you felt for not being as dedicated and steadfast in your love of God's law and God's expectations, and you were afraid that punishment might come again. It's one thing if you imagine those marriages being broken up and you're setting a very comfortable sort of suburban bourgeois existence. It's different if you're a Native American person wondering about the survival of your language or your culture, um, against sort of an overall over onslaught ING power of whiteness or other forces outside of your community. So just trying to sort of wrestle with Scripture, not to give again, is one of those readings is right, and one of them is wrong. Um, but even just posing questions differently or changing our perspective, um, gets us to look at the text differently and again, might get us to look at other people differently in our communities, near and far.

Dwight Zscheile: Um, so just to follow up on that, um, as we think about how Scripture is functions in congregations and there's certainly there's sermons and kind of the worship context, but what have you found, um, as helpful practices alongside that, that are a little more dialogical, a little more like what you're describing, that kind of, um, let's come in and interpret this together as a community, not just I'm the preacher who's interpreting it on our behalf or, you know, here's what you should think about it. Um, if Luther was giving lectures, but he was also having table talks and sorting through things in that way. So I think particularly in this season, when Scripture can be misused or become weaponized in various ways. Um, what does that look like in congregations that are that you've seen, that are engaging it dialogically and interactively and really participatory way they get it both the deeper layers of meaning that are possible and the diversity of perspectives, but also where Scripture can be a shared story that we can all enter into rather than something that separates us.

Anthony Bateza: I mean, I think the places I've seen this done best are those instances where individuals and congregations have sort of a loose collection of stories or moments in Scripture that they often sort of turn back to her point to in terms of how they think about themselves in terms of stories or locations in the text or characters or moments that have formed their mission, their sense of vision, their sense of where they are, their namesake. Um, they can kind of remind themselves what those stories have meant. Um, to me, that's similar to kind of Luther's insistence on the gospel within the gospel, the sense that, yes, we have the wide, you know, 66 books plus or minus of Scripture sitting out before us, but we also sort of have those touchstone moments, those key texts that we all, I think, sort of carry in us and carry forward. Um, I know some people have a longing for the days of confirmation where students had memorized, like, a passage and, like, name it and claim it and give it verbatim. I know that was always the most effective way to do that, but I like the idea of having passages in your pocket. Yeah. Um, and reflecting on them again in conversation with others and asking yourself, how does this really fit with what we're doing right now? If what we're saying right now, um, um, I also think it's a sort of interesting that more and more congregations are trying to figure out how to do narrative lectionaries and how to look to other lectionaries, like the Luminous Lectionary by doctor Will Gaffney and those kinds of things where you can sort of come at these texts together, um, from a different perspective together and kind of work together and be challenged in, um, how are womanist scholars and communities and individuals, uh, black folks near and far are reading this text and then move on beyond to a different community, perhaps for another series of conversations. Um, there was a congregation in Northfield this last summer. Uh, spring and Summer was doing a learning about our Jewish neighbors and siblings and sort of reading a series of books, looking at scripture, having a rabbi in to speak. Um, doing these kinds of things where we're going to, like, really do this intensive, ongoing, multiple opportunities to do our best to both listen and try to inhabit a different perspective, a different viewpoint on these texts kind of openly. And people keep talking about that. So then you have the story of how you did that. Remember we did that that one time. Should we do it again? Should we do something else that becomes a part of your DNA, a part of your sort of ongoing way of living Scripture?

Alicia Granholm: What would you say might be some common ethical pitfalls that churches and church leaders should avoid when engaging in public discourse?

Anthony Bateza: Boy, there are so many ethical pitfalls, right? Right.

Alicia Granholm: What to choose from?

Anthony Bateza: Yes, it's a real, um. It's a it's a real smorgasbord. Um. Oh, okay. I'll pick one that I think I experienced a lot in Lutheran contexts that also picks up with something that I hinted at earlier where I said Luther sometimes gets things wrong, or sort of says things that don't quite sound right or resonate with me today. Um, Christians love love, right? We love talking about love and Christian love. We love printing it on, on mugs, on banners, on t shirts and swag around the congregation. So we love talking about love. Sometimes we use the Greek word agape, and this gives us a sense that we're getting at something more Jesus like or more God like, because we're using a Greek word. Um, and there have been just sort of piles and piles and pages spilled on. How is it that Christian love is so different than other kinds of love that we experience in the world? And how is it that God's love is so radically different than other kinds of love that we experience? I worry about all of that. Um, everything that I said there. Um, I understand what people are going for. I understand what some scholars in the past have gone for, and trying to emphasize how his Christian love, how was Christ's love different than other experiences of love? But I wonder about trying to define ourselves so strongly through difference, trying to say, what is it that we have or that God is giving that we don't experience anywhere else? When I think that we do experience that all kinds of places. Um, we don't experience only sacrificial love through Jesus. We experience it through family. We experience it hopefully through friends, through community, from political leaders, either again because they're taking sacrifices on themselves, or they're refusing to or asking others to sacrifice things that they themselves would never give up, never be willing to give up. And so I think, again, if we're attentive to that fact, we don't sort of get locked into this Christian community as one thing. God's love is one thing. And human relationships and communities, they're always going to be different. Uh, that gets us into the trap of thinking that politics is always anger, always battle. But the church is always love and warmth. I think there's love and warmth in both of those places, and plenty of battle and blood spilled in both those places. I also think that following that same kind of love line and the ethics ethical mistakes we can make, Luther, when he was responding to the German peasants responding to lots of people, sometimes look to this idea of suffering as a criteria, as a way to sort of measure whether or not we were loving in a Christian way. And so he, for example, was critical of the peasants because he's like, oh, you're just trying to get economic things. You're out for yourselves, you're self-interested. You're not concerned for your neighbor. And if you really loved as Christ loved, you would just, you know, grin and bear it and suffer and pray to God to change it and just kind of keep marching forward. And that seems wrong, both as a reading of scripture, a reading of Jesus. Uh, theologically, they're just all kinds of issues there. I understand instances where that makes sense. There are times when I need to hear that message from others or from myself. You know, suck it up, Anthony. Right. Um, sometimes I'm going to like meetings that I don't want to go to. Right. Or I have bureaucratic paperwork to do and, like faculty meetings. Exactly. I don't want to fill out that Excel spreadsheet. These these spreadsheets are all made up and arbitrary. I'm going to fight this this, uh, oppression put upon me. Um, and then I'm like, no, just it is maybe kind of a waste of time sometimes. A lot of bureaucracy is. And yet it's your responsibility. People need you to do it. Just, you know, suck it up and do it. Um, you know, and that can go on to other more serious or substantial issues. But I think Luther, in this focus on love and suffering, sometimes misses that, um, when we're advocating for ourselves, sometimes we're also advocating for others. The peasants were fighting for their economic status and their economic well-being, not just individually, but collectively. So it wasn't that they were being entitled. It wasn't that they were being uppity. They weren't sort of being, um, people who were looking for welfare handouts of some kind. That kind of use more of our modern language. There were folks who were arguing for themselves and whole swaths of the community that were being denied what they were already due by justice, what they were already owed by right, but had been taken from them, and all kinds of backroom and other machinations. So I think that Christians and a lot of preaching I hear sometimes, particularly in certain contexts, slide into a, you know, we need to be more loving as Christians. We're going to just show them how loving and kind and not angry we can be, when sometimes it's more loving to show people how angry we actually are, to name the things we're angry about, and to listen to others as they receive or reject what we're talking about, and to keep that going. Um, that is one of the beauties of the church and of being people of God is that even though we have elections coming up, even though we have sort of dates on the calendar that are very important, even though there are lives eventually run out at some point on the calendar, I think I hope that we have a bigger sense of time, of eternity and recognizing that we can't sort of cast people away. We're not going to win something once and for all. We have to keep returning to these things over and over again. And so when we're using ethics and morality and religion as a weapon, as a cudgel to try and win, um, that's an ethical mistake, um, of, of a deep kind that misses our sense of time and eternity and where God is in all of those.

Dwight Zscheile: So one last question for you. Um, where are you finding hope in this particular season? And, um, what would you say to those leaders or listeners out there who are struggling to, um, to identify hope in a challenging time for the church, not just because of the political season, but just all the changes going on in our society, institutional challenges that are facing many congregations and conflict that is heated within them, and things like that. Where are you finding hope?

Anthony Bateza: Yeah, yeah. Well, I'll start with the second part. Start with the pastors and leaders and folks in congregations. Um, hope this is hopeful. We'll see if I get there. But if.

Alicia Granholm: It's hopeful for you.

Anthony Bateza: That's what we'll see. Yeah. Yeah, well, it's permission giving. And that, to me, is a kind of hopefulness. Um, so I think that sometimes pastors are really worried about where their congregations are going to go. Mhm. Um, sort of financially, institutionally are going to be open in six months and six years. What's the trajectory look like? And at the same time, they're also really committed to caring for and loving the people that they've been given and the people that they're reaching out to. And so I don't want to hurt people. They don't want to push people away through their action or through their inaction, through things done or things left undone. I want to recognize and just name all of that, and I want to encourage pastors to do that as well. And again, in ways that are appropriate in contexts that allow for dialogue, um, not just sermons about how like you're carrying a heavy load word about the church, and then you sit down and and call that call that a Sunday morning, but really opening up venues for conversation, for sharing your worries where they're coming from and letting others sort of help build you back up and give you their own stories of hope, their own chance to reinvest, to recommit in ways that they may not even didn't even know that you needed or that the church needed. I also think that pastors can put a lot of weight on themselves when there's a conflict in the church, either because something they did or something they didn't do. And that generates a bit of anxiety, a bit of fear. This is where I'm not sure if this is hopeful or not, but we often, I think, point to moments of conflict and the aftermath as a time when things, you know, bad things happened in the church. We brought up becoming reconciling in Christ. And five families left and we lost this funding. And there's this deep focus on this moment and perhaps a tension or conflict that it generated. I think what's harder for us to pay attention to is not that one moment, but all the moments before and after that, that people who wander into and out of the church for all kinds of reasons, um, being drawn to your family ministry, being drawn to your preaching, to your music, to your activism in the community, or being repelled by not having those kinds of things, folks who slip away quietly, not because they're storming out angrily, but because they just get bored, or get distracted or get drawn away by other things. And so recognizing that all of that is sort of happening before you, I think that takes down the temperature and the fear about saying the wrong thing about a hot button issue being the thing that's going to make or break the church. There's not one thing that will make or break the church. There's lots of things so it can be anxiety producing as well. Lots of ways things could go bad, but also lots of way things that can go well and that can go amazingly well and miraculously well. What might be drawn to your church because of what one, you know, kind, elderly person in a pew says to the visitor next to them that might make or break your church for the new families that come in in ways that you couldn't plan for, can't predict and can't control, you know, much like God and the Holy Spirit. Um, so kind of, again, stepping back from our own importance, our own involvement. Um, not to absolve ourselves from getting involved, but to recognize that we're only involved in what God is doing. God has been doing things before we got there, and we'll keep doing things long after our passing. So the places that I see hope are in all those kinds of moments where I've experienced a sense of sort of miraculous grace, that people's willingness to talk about things, to ask me questions, people's willingness to push back on me and to challenge me to sometimes do less or to do more. Um, and that to me says that these are people who are invested in me, that they're invested in this community and that God is working in and through them. And so I can point to those places and feel a sense of, you know, that's where I see love and that's where I see grace. I may not have the perfect biblical passage or the perfect theological interpretation, but I can point to and tell stories about these experiences. And it's not speaking in tongues. It's not rising from the grave, but it's the kind of speech and the kind of resurrection that I need on a daily basis. So. Mhm.

Alicia Granholm: Well thank you so much for joining us Anthony. It's been great talking with you today. We've loved having you.

Anthony Bateza: Its been my pleasure truly, and honor, and thank you for all your work of trying to connect these messages about life and theology and politics to folks where they are. It's it's awesome.

Alicia Granholm: Oh thank you. And to our audience, thank you for joining us on this episode of Pivot. To help spread the word about pivot, please like and subscribe if you're catching us on YouTube and if you're listening, go ahead to the Apple Podcast and leave us a review. It really does help.

Dwight Zscheile: Finally, the best compliment you can give us is to share pivot with a friend. Until next time. This is Dwight Zscheile and Alicia Granholm signing off. See you next week.

Faith+Lead: The Pivot Podcast is a production of Luther Seminary's Faith Lead. Faith Lead is an ecosystem of theological resources and training designed to equip Christian disciples and leaders to follow God into a faithful future. Learn more at faithlead.org.