Dr. Michael W. Austin: 0:00
And so what I think people like Martin Luther King, jimmy Carter and others did? They brought their faith to bear, but in a way that they weren’t trying to make it a Christian nation as such, even though sometimes they talk that way. But I think it was like what’s the ideal human community, what King called the beloved community? But in that community we’re not just there for our neighbors defined as Christians, and often Christians who are the same color as me, but it’s for the immigrant, for the stranger for the person who has a different faith or no faith at all.
Bishop Wright: 0:34
Wright. Hi everyone, this is Bishop Rob Wright and this is, for People Today, a rare treat. We’ve got author and professor Michael W Austin from Eastern Kentucky University. Michael, welcome to For People.
Bishop Wright: 1:01
Thank you very much Looking forward to the discussion. If you find Michael W Austin on his ex-profile, this is what you’ll read A philosopher focused on spiritual formation, cultivating character and contributing to the common good and and this is the part I love also some controversial stuff. Well done on that. Michael is prolific. He’s a prolific author. He has written lots of books on coffee and cycling, on fatherhood, football and philosophy very timely for us, the Olympics and philosophy on the subject of being good and most recently he’s written books on humility and the book at issue today American Christian Nationalism Neither American Nor Christian.
Dr. Michael W. Austin: 1:54
So, michael, why’d you write this book? Yeah, I think I just got my first author advanced copy. The publisher sends one before they send the rest, and I’m reminded and I wrote in the book I said I didn’t want to write this book, Like I really didn’t want to, because it’s difficult to read some of the stuff that’s out there that some of the Christian nationalists that write books about it put out. But I thought I’d read some books and had conversations and there’s some excellent work on this, but a lot of those books are 200, 250 page more for academics, and so I wanted to write a book. It ends up being about 80 pages of actual text that someone who’s like am I a Christian nationalist or is a patriot? The same thing, what’s the difference?
Dr. Michael W. Austin: 2:34
I hear this word more and more online and in real life. What is it? And so I wanted to give sort of a non-polemic not not it’s like an attack, but just a explanation and criticism of it. That was succinct, and so, as I went into it, both as from sort of as we’ll talk about american values and then, more importantly, to followers of jesus, christian values and the fails on both accounts, and then I paint a picture. I wanted to paint a picture at the end. What? What is a healthy and a proper? At least a proper form? Maybe not. What is a healthy and a proper, at least a proper form. Maybe not be, but at least one of the proper forms of Christian political engagement in America.
Bishop Wright: 3:12
Yeah, and I think that’s what a lot of people really want to know is is that, if I love my country and I’m doing my very best to follow Jesus as Lord, how does my engage, how should my engagement look like? What’s appropriate, what’s healthy, what’s consistent with Matthew, mark, luke and John? Right? So well, let’s begin at the beginning. So you’re a philosophy teacher, a practicing Christian. You’ve been married to Dawn for over three decades, got three young adult ladies who are out in the world, making it better. So you’re a dad, a husband. You’re a member of a Christian community making it better. So you’re a dad, a husband, you’re a member of a Christian community and you’ve got something to say about why Christian nationalism isn’t American. Let’s start there.
Dr. Michael W. Austin: 3:52
Yeah. So there are a lot of things, but I focused some of the things I focused on. If you think of what it means to be a patriot, a friend of mine, tom Morris, wrote a book called the Everyday Patriot and liberties and American value, equality and service, which we don’t think as much, but I think it is, and of course I mean anybody. We haven’t lived up to those and we’re still not, but you know we’ve made progress, but those are core American values. People across the political spectrum talk about liberty, liberty and equality and, I think, service as well, and so you see, I’ve tried to just use the writings, both in books and online, of people who advocate for this in their own words. So there’s a lack of liberty about how, in his ideal Christian state, if a committed Muslim tries to convert a committed Christian, that Muslim can be put in jail because they’re dangerous to the Christian and Christian faith and in principle, they could be executed, but we probably wouldn’t have to do that. So that’s extreme, but that’s just. It’s not. It’s not an interpretation, it’s not. You don’t have to do any work, you can just quote it. So I think there are concerns about religious liberty for me beyond even that extreme where, about what people can do.
Dr. Michael W. Austin: 5:13
Think about equality right, there’s some. A lot of them have serious issues with gender equality. On the more extreme realm, you’ll see some of these guys, pastors and others, talk about women shouldn’t even have the right to vote in the ideal Christian state. And there’s again, religious equality right, that you can be non-Christian, can be a part of the state, but they can’t participate as fully, they might not be able to be in government, right. So there’s religious tests for holding political office, which runs counter to the Constitution, the article six or seven or whatever. It is right that you, I can’t, you know it’s in the book, but yeah, yeah, so that’s a problem.
Dr. Michael W. Austin: 5:50
And then I think of service and this starts to overlap more fully with Christian values. Um, there’s definitely an anti-immigration thing and and there’s a protectionism where I just serve my neighbor where my neighbor is, and there’s something good about this. My neighbor’s the people in my community, and that’s true. But a yeah, america first to the extreme, right, and I just think of all the things that we have materially and otherwise that just on an American view. Think about the things our military has done on a positive realm, overseas of service, humanitarian aid. You know we’ve done great things. We helped, we’ve helped reduce deaths and by aids and in the african continent and other places, because we just gave money, government and individuals. So all those things, I think, are american values that we should aspire to, and you can just find numerous christ, christian nationalists in their writings and in their speaking, you know, contradict those things and so for, even if you’re not religious, not a Christian, just an American, that should be deeply troubling.
Bishop Wright: 6:56
Yeah, you know one of the cases.
Bishop Wright: 6:58
I’m going to do a lecture coming up on this, and one of the things that really occurs to me is that this sort of extreme nationalism is a fear response, right, it’s a response to the changing demographics, the evolution of certain norms around you know what is a marriage, who are couples, etc.
Bishop Wright: 7:37
Et cetera and the encroachment of, you know, or brown people in particular coming into the country. It seems like the founders’ expectation was at the founding of the nation, there was a breath there, even though it was 55 white males in a room who got the Constitution done, but nevertheless it spoke to a breath. And certainly we’ve been working on that over nearly 248 years. We’ve been working on broadening things, and then now comes this definition, triggered by fear and I would say, not a little bit of idolatry, that’s tightening up things and rounding off certain edges, and so certainly I think liberty is one, and it’s interesting that every time we sort of get in one of these throws politically, the control of women is not far away, right? And so, as you talked about that, so is that your sense of things?
Dr. Michael W. Austin: 8:41
Yeah, I think fear is a big part of it For a lot of people it’s easy to capitalize on it and if you can, you can turn your whether it’s economic, racial, the demographics, all the different things that can can lead to that.
Dr. Michael W. Austin: 8:55
I mean, I think my philosopher, not a psychologist, but you kind of read enough and interact with people enough you know if you can like turn that fear outward towards others, like them being the source of what’s wrong. So you just take the immigration thing as an example. I don’t have the solution, but I know that we should be doing something better than we are some kind of reform that’s, that’s humane and just, and but if it’s but the, yeah, turning the, the fear of, I mean immigrants commit crimes I was just looking yesterday at three different studies at a lower rate than just in American citizens, but yet that’s where it gets turned towards right, rather than the actual causes or the different things that contribute to crime in our country. It’s well, it’s the other right, the people coming from the southern border, not the northern one, but the southern one, right?
Bishop Wright: 9:41
So, yeah, it’s disturbing. It’s disturbing and you know, for our purposes it’s not only disturbing but it’s layered untruth. Right, it’s a layered untruth. I was listening to another scholar who happens to have your name, michael Austin, and he wrote a book some years back that basically said is that we’ve made the 55 founders of this country into sort of a collective unity of one person. He calls it founderstein.
Bishop Wright: 10:15
We’ve sort of pieced together Patrick Henry and George Washington and James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. We sort of piece these people together and have decided, you know, looking back, that they had one mind about matters like liberty and service, et cetera. Looking back that they had one mind about matters like liberty and service, et cetera, and that they had one mind particularly about what it meant to believe. And that sort of jumpstarts us into the next phase. And so you say it’s not only it’s not American, right, this Christian nationalism business, but it’s also not Christian. Now, the founders didn’t agree on any one definition of Christianity. Some were deists, some were very devout. Patrick Henry, very devout, wrote beautifully about his faith. George Washington not so much. He was trying to figure it all out. Jefferson decided he ought to help the Bible out by chopping it up and creating his own version, but he thought that creating a space for faith was the right thing, as this nation launched out. So why isn’t Christian nationalism Christian?
Dr. Michael W. Austin: 11:22
Yeah, so sometimes the founders thing reminded me of something. So sometimes it’s the use of the Bible, proof text, but in just in ways that are just clearly. Sometimes it just they’re not even connected. So, for example, I was reading one of these two main books I interact with and the author said that we should revere our founding fathers right, american, so we should revere the founders. And then there’s a Bible verse next to it so that I’m going to look this up because I can’t imagine and it was, I think it’s, it’s Philippians, I believe that and it said about revering our God and Father. And so but I’m like, yeah, there’s the word Father, but other than that there’s nothing similar.
Dr. Michael W. Austin: 12:02
They take, you know, take Matthew 28. You know we have some people call the Great Commission, right, go and make disciples of all nations. They make that into. Go and take over governments of all nations and make them Christians through the government, and so it’s not Christian because it’s one. It’s a clear misuse of scripture over and over.
Dr. Michael W. Austin: 12:19
And to the church, right is the is God’s instrument to bring love, bring the gospel of the kingdom to all who would want it and choose to enter it, and so I think that’s a big problem. I think of you, think of the love, the great commandment, love God, love your neighbor as yourself, and couple that with the parable of the Good Samaritan. There’s another text. I talk about loving your neighbors. Well, who is my neighbor? And so they ask that the nationalists ask that question. Who is my neighbor? And so they asked that the nationalists asked that question. Who is my neighbor? Just like the man, the scholar of the law, asked Jesus. And then Jesus, what does Jesus do? He turns it on his head. Not about that’s not the question, it’s how can I be a neighbor? And so I think some of those same warnings there’s just there’s a strong limit on who we owe anything to in terms of love and humility is a big part to me too.
Dr. Michael W. Austin: 13:13
That other centeredness right, or I put the interests of others ahead of my own, as paul talks about in philippians, and that pattern of jesus, the incarnation, the crucifixion, taking on, you know, the sort of this key part of christian theology, and there’s just not a humility, you know. So the one of them said that white evangelicals are the lone bulwark against moral insanity in America, and as someone who became an evangelical when I was in high school without knowing it, still would say I am now, but in ways that are very different from how that, how that word is morphed in our society. And it seems doesn’t seem very different from how that, how that word is morphed in our society. I mean, it seems doesn’t seem much different from fundamentalist to me these days. And the political stuff that’s just that just ignores you know, a few hundred years of the black church, for example, or um non-event local christians who have done great good.
Dr. Michael W. Austin: 14:22
I just it seems it contradicts the way of jesus. Um, like, as you said at the beginning, matthew, mark, luke and john, we’re supposed to be followers of the way capital w. You can just find case after case here where it just not only does it not match up, often it directly contradicts.
Speaker 2: 14:42
This is your producer, easton Davis. Thank you for listening to Four People a conversation about faith and leadership. Thank you for listening to Four People a conversation about faith and leadership. We encourage you to support the show, leave feedback and follow us all from the show’s episode description. And now back to Four People.
Bishop Wright: 15:02
It directly contradicts and it’s interesting to me. In my opinion, you know and I’m still studying the Bible I would by no means say, even as a bishop, that I’ve got the thing mastered. I still live with it, love it and live in tension with it. But you know, when I hear Christian nationalists talk about this notion of dominion and power, it sounds coercive, as you have said in a lecture at Youngstown State. You know, it seems to limit love. It seems to limit the scope and scale of the neighborliness right of Jesus’s friend-making campaign. It seems to want a power that Jesus never wanted.
Bishop Wright: 15:44
I think about Jesus’s ride into Jerusalem and how he sort of signaled to us that he was going to embody power in a different way than the government officials I think about. When he talks about leadership, the means, you know it was decidedly different and he draws a couple of contrasts. It shall not be like you, it shall not be so for you. You’ll not sort of coerce people, you’ll not lord it over other people, et cetera. So on a number of ways it just doesn’t seem to square up, and so I guess I get a little bit offended, frankly speaking, that they call it Christian nationalism. I mean it really looks more like a Levitical code, that they’ve sort of borrowed Jesus’s brand identity and tried to bring it forward into the 21st century. But we have to draw a distinction here, because I know there are people who are listening, who are wondering yeah, but what about these men and women who have professed love for Jesus, life for Jesus? And they have changed our nation for the better.
Bishop Wright: 16:52
So, was Dr King a Christian nationalist? Was Frederick Douglass a Christian nationalist? Was Jimmy Carter, for that matter, a Christian nationalist? What do you say to that?
Dr. Michael W. Austin: 17:01
Yeah, I think. No, I mean what they did and what Christians, I think many of us, try to do answer that question how does my faith bring? What does it bear? How does it bear on my? I’ll start again here, since we can do that.
Dr. Michael W. Austin: 17:18
So, yeah, I would say they weren’t Christian nationalists, but they were trying to answer that question how does my faith impact my life as an American? What does it mean to be an American to serve the common good, god and his sovereignty or providence? Right, we were born here and we’re supposed to contribute to the common good as Christians. So I think for me a major difference there too, one is that the coercion you talked about. Certainly there’s laws. We should be seeking to have a just state broadly speaking, but I think what they did well was an inclusive approach rather than exclusive right. So I think that’s more true to the way of Christ.
Dr. Michael W. Austin: 17:57
And then I think you know something that I think is really disturbing from a Christian point of view is that fusing of identities that happens on American Christian nationalism. Like my identity is American and Christian. Those things are intertwined and they’re inseparable, and often it feels like the American part, a certain kind of American part, actually is running the show. And so what I think people like Martin Luther King, jimmy Carter and others did, they brought their faith to bear, but in a way that they weren’t trying to make it a Christian nation as such, and even though sometimes they talk that way. But I think it was like what’s the ideal human community, what King called the beloved community and I’ve just been. You know, some people connect that idea with the American philosopher, josiah Royce, and so I’ve been trying to read a little bit about what he said. But in that community it’s not. We’re not just there for our neighbors defined as Christians and often Christians who are the same color as me are kin. So you know, it’s the language, they, but it’s for the immigrant, for the stranger, for the person who has a different faith or no faith at all, and so it’s the way to bring our christian faith to bear.
Dr. Michael W. Austin: 18:58
In the beloved community and I’ve heard numerous people as I’ve had conversations like this idea is cropping up more than I’ve ever heard before, which I think is encouraging. But it’s just because all people are made in god’s image and so they’ve got that intrinsic worth and value, and so if I’m, that’s the bottom, you know, for me, that’s what’s, it’s beloved, because the boundaries go away. We, we try to serve people in our nation, beyond our nation, as we have means, and so it’s that, that self-giving love, that that the power is actually found in service, um, in sacrificial love and humility. It’s a different kind of power, it’s that upside down kingdom of jesus, and so I think that that’s what I like, and so it’s not that we can’t bring our faith to bear on it, but it’s rather, how do we do that, and are we actually doing that? I mean, so I think there’s some disagreement about what it means to do it, and then the methods as well.
Bishop Wright: 19:48
Yeah, it’s how to be Christian, right. You know, what’s sad to me is that this word evangelical has become so tainted, it’s been hijacked. But the word is about good news, right, and the good news is that we serve a big God who’s trying to broaden all of our hearts. Right, and you know all the limits that we want to oppose on other and neighbor. You know God is trying to obliterate them. We want to oppose on other and neighbor. You know God is trying to obliterate them, and most poetically, profoundly perhaps, in the life teachings, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I mean, and I find that the human project in that, or the believer’s project in that, is to always try to shrink Jesus and then Jesus. We live in this tension with Jesus where Jesus is always trying to broaden us. But I find that it’s non-coercive, it’s never condemnation, it’s always invitation.
Bishop Wright: 20:39
And I think this is what Christian nationalism gets wrong. It’s trying to legislate matters of the heart. I think we have to set a moral floor height. Of course we have to Equity, justice, right, rule of law, those sorts of things. But I think we distinguish ourselves, you know, in some ways, not by the treatises we write, but by the witness? That would be my invitation to Christians. Is that how we influence situations if that’s what we want to be about, how we influence the state is by a really compelling witness. I mean, that’s why you and I are sitting here 2,000 years right after Jesus. Is that because people’s witness to their experience of Jesus Christ and flushing that, has made significant difference, you know, over the millennia, and you know we’re hey, it has to be said at 240, some odd years old.
Bishop Wright: 21:31
We are an adolescent nation and we are still testing I believe understandably, but sometimes tragically when I think about January 6th still testing the integrity of those ideals. Right, do they still hold sway over us? Yeah, and so we’re still experimenting with those ideas. And I think you know Jamar Tisby, who’s a scholar, and this really got to me and really concerns me. He’s worried about Christian nationalism because he says that it’s going to produce atheists in the next series of generations and that it’s dangerous to our Christian witness, because so many young people like your kids and my kids are going to hear this sort of not quite Christian speak and they’re going to run away from that, thank God, but they’re not going to run to this other Christianity that we’re talking about this way of Jesus that we’re talking about. They’re just going to leave the whole enterprise alone. You have any thoughts about that?
Dr. Michael W. Austin: 22:40
Yeah, I mean I think if you, if you think about it in a sense, well, not, it just is. It often is a false gospel. I mean they talk about I’ve read Christian nationalists and I don’t talk about the strong God of the nation, small G God, but that’s, yeah, I think they. They see what we’ve said, many Christians have said over the decades, and then they see it’s not matching up and see we’re doing this and the very people that that Jesus like. I mean, look, it’s not hard to think who would Jesus be spending time with if he was around in our day?
Dr. Michael W. Austin: 23:12
They’re the people that are getting pushed to the margins, are kept at the margins, are prevented from even yeah, from so many things, and I think a core part of it is they see that we might remain Christians who are kind of buying into this stuff. We’re putting material goods above spiritual goods, if that makes sense, right, it all matters. Right, God’s about redeeming everything. But if I’m pursuing wealth or power or position or status at the expense of faith, hope and love or the fruit of the Spirit or you know all the humility, then I’m getting it wrong and I think I mean I can understand, because I mean I think they’re not leaving Jesus, right, they’re leaving some kind of counterfeit Jesus. In my view, and that’s great. We just need to do a better job of pointing to and doing what we can in our frail humanity of exemplifying the way, the way of Christ have to say also, it’s very seductive to want to get well.
Bishop Wright: 24:20
It’s very seductive to get Jesus wrong for personal gain or for gain of your tribe, et cetera.
Bishop Wright: 24:24
You know we love our martyrs dead. You know there was a poll taken of Dr King the year before he died and he was among the most unpopular Americans right and even right here in Atlanta, one of the most unpopular citizens of this city. And you know now, lo, these many decades since he’s been gone, we all love him and I have the good fortune of being friends and conversation partner with Ambassador Andrew Young, who was sort of his lieutenant all along those heady days. And you know he always he loves the fact that so many people have come to love and appreciate Dr King, but he never loses sight of the fact that it was really a numerical minority, sort of leaven, that really spoke to this country’s heart and said you know, we can do better, we ought to do better. Being better is in our DNA and that includes Jews and Muslims, baha’is, jains, hindus and people who have no express faith at all, and so I’m so grateful for those folks who can help us to track and reflect on where we think we are.
Dr. Michael W. Austin: 25:33
Yeah, I’ve run into a quote from Dallas Willard, who influenced on my understanding of the gospel. The kingdom in many ways don’t agree about everything, but he said something. Basically, if what we believe about God is true as Christians, then it would be very strange indeed if God had nothing to do with people of other religious faiths or of not, you know, and the implication of none at all. And, of course, if God is love, then he’s got everything to do. I mean, even the Old Testament, right, melchizedek just kind of shows up Like who’s this guy? He’s not one of us.
Bishop Wright: 26:02
Right and Israel’s liberation right was a non-Jew. I mean so again and again and again. If we actually read the Bible, we find that God has decided to work through all kinds of people for God’s righteous purposes and so to begin to prohibit. That seems to be, you know, frustrating the grace of God and I don’t think any of us want to be involved in that. You are a delight. I could talk to you for an hour easily, an hour more easily, and I just want to say how grateful I am to have found your scholarship and to see your videos, hear your videos, and thank you for being so generous with your time and meeting us here.
Dr. Michael W. Austin: 26:49
I appreciate it. I’ve enjoyed this very much. Thank you.
Bishop Wright: 26:52
Brothers and sisters, the book is American, Christian Nationalism Neither American Nor Christian by Michael W Austin. God bless.
