Ep. 236 - David Fitch

[00:00:07] Speaker A: Welcome to that makes total sense, a podcast dedicated to exploring God's generosity and justice. I'm Alexis Busetti, a Christian aiming to ask good questions and encouraging you to do the same. Every one of us is wired by God to live out generosity and justice. But that the how sometimes eluse us that makes total sense, is a way for us to get together, posture ourselves as learners, and challenge one another to practice generosity and justice in a tangible way. Every day you well, we are sitting in January. It will be after that, before this airs. But my guest and I were just talking about the weather, but not in a, in line at the grocery store kind of talking about the weather. We are kind of at different ends of this cold front that's coming through. So, David, you are home, but can you even open your door? Is the snow that crazy? [00:01:10] Speaker B: If truth be told, I've got neighbors across the street to my left and to my right who are using their snowblowers and they're doing my front walk in my. Wow. And I said to someone 15 minutes ago, I said, maybe I'll just hide in here a little longer and let them do it. But yeah, people are getting out. There's a lull. There's like six inches and then a lull, and then there's going to come another six inches. And I'm going to be out there, folks. I'm going to be out there with my snowblower. I'm going to be doing it until the second wave is over. [00:01:46] Speaker A: Oh, my goodness. It's so funny. My husband grew up in Colorado and we now live in Houston. And so we hear what sounds like snowblowers, but they're leaf blowers. And so it's just all year, know, either the cuttings of the grass, know, nine months out of the year, and then the other few months, it's a little bit of cutting of the grass and leaves. But I remember when his dad and family visited one of the first, I think the first year we lived in Houston, it was like January and they were blown away that the yard crews were out. And we're like, yes, because the yard crews are out year round. And so it's just a different weather paradigm from the snowblowers to the leaf blowers being out all the time. But we should be getting a little bit of what you have in just a few days so we're prepared. I told my son, I hope the city doesn't shut down. [00:02:33] Speaker B: Yes, we wish you Texans well because you're not used to this kind of thing. [00:02:39] Speaker A: We're not. Yeah, there was a meme the other day I posted that someone else had showed that said, talked about how big elephants were at birth, and they said, there's no bigger baby except Texans in the cold. And I'm like, yes, that would be. Anyway, I'm sitting here humbly received. I'm sure it's pretty bad. I'm talking about the weather with David Fitch, who is in the Chicago area, professor at Northern Seminary. I'm so glad to have you. I just yesterday finished your new book, reckoning with power. So reckoning with power. The subtitle is why the church fails when it's on the wrong side of power. And it's a heartbreaking, even subtitle for me to read. And I think for many of us who are evangelical or evangelical adjacent or exvangelical or devangelical or however we want to categorize ourselves these days, because we have experienced, we have seen, we have heard over and over and over again in our culture, in our lifetimes, in our adulthood. And many of us experience as children, the church doing just that, just failing. Because I would say we don't know how to deal with power. I think, as your book brings out in part, I might even say, we're not even really sure what power is or how to deal with this thing that we call power. We're not even sure what it is. So before we get into it, I want to just, first, thank you for your work in this second, just say personally, this is something I've been processing, trying to think better about for years now. You'll probably hear that in this conversation. And then also to steal something from what you mentioned in your acknowledgments page, which I usually skim through those, which you thanked several people that we would know who read through this and engaged with you. And you also noted many of them didn't agree with everything that you wrote. And I admitted to you before we started, David, I'm in that camp. I don't agree with everything you wrote, but I'm grateful for the conversation, and I'm grateful for you as a partner in this moment to just help me process some of those things, some of the things I do agree with, some of the things I don't, and some of the things where I'm just kind of still chewing on it. So thank you for that. [00:05:14] Speaker B: Yeah, I would say we're in a moment, a cultural moment. And when I say we, I'm talking about not just evangelicals, not just post evangelical, ex evangelical, but Protestants in general, actually, maybe just Christians across the board. We're in this moment where we have seen such horrific signs of abuse of power around us, but among us that it is time to take a moment here and let's reflect and let's think deeply, and let's examine scripture's history, understand what power is. Most of us is power so complex, how to understand so complex. But most of us know abuse of power when we see it, and by then, it might be too late. I mean, could we not have engaged it prior to the abuse? And that's why this book is out. I also want to say it's a disruptive book. I am what people refer to as a neo Anabaptist. [00:06:32] Speaker A: Neo Anabaptist. [00:06:33] Speaker B: Anabaptist. I'm a culture theorist. Neo Anabaptist. I still don't mind being called an evangelical when people understand what I mean when I say evangelical, which I don't mean what most people mean when they say evangelical, but I have commitment to scripture, commitment to Jesus, what he has, what God hath done in Jesus through the cross, the resurrection, and the. So I'm kind of like one of those people, but I'm a neo Anabaptist, which means I'm not comfortable with the way evangelicals and Protestants culturally have seen power. So I want to disrupt it. So that's a little introduction to reckoning with power. Let's take a deep dive on the subject of power. [00:07:23] Speaker A: Let's do it. I love that you call yourself a neo anabapist. It's funny to me. A few years ago, I told my husband, I'm like, listen, if it wasn't for the people who live in my house, I would be anabaptist. So we all got to get on the same page. We all got to figure out a place to go, a place to be. Yeah, but I like that. And disrupting. Okay, so where to start? So much of me wants to start kind of where you start with the defining of power, which I think is helpful. I want to just throw it out there for you in this conversation to say, I'm going back and forth between, should we start with a definition, or should we start with some history? In part, I say that because I'm not a history buff, but I am coming to appreciate more and more what historical context can do for us as we're trying to understand where we presently are. That's a tough one for me, because history for me, I'm like, I'll study it. If it starts in the 19 hundreds. It's just not necessarily helpful. But you go back kind of pre constantine, which I think is more helpful, and I think it's necessary, very necessary for this conversation. So I'll let choose your own adventure definitions of power or history, and then we'll flip flop maybe, and do the other one after. [00:08:48] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, this book is quite full of history, the history of how power has been understood, the history in scripture, how scripture narrates power. And then, of course, our most recent modern protestant understandings of power, even to the extent, let's look at the civil rights movement, let's look at the civil war, let's look at how evangelicals got ensconced in what I call cultural forms of worldly power. I don't think you can start conversation on anything theological without knowing from whence you came. But here's a good place to start. Got to start somewhere. Most current people in the United States of America, I'll throw Canada in there. I'll stick with Canada in the United States. I won't go Europe. It gets more complex the further out you go. Most of us have a understanding of power, which starts with Max Faber, who describes power as person a or institution a, can get person b or institution b to do what person a or institution b wants person b to do. I think I lost my Alphabet there a little. And, and then Robert Dahl and some other social theorists have really, it's in the water now, everywhere you go. That's sociology of power. You start there. But, folks, we're a ways away. And this is where the post structuralist Michel Foucault, the frenchman, really started delving into. He's working off of Nietzsche, who preceded him. It's all in one. So we realize now that the Lord coming to the serf with his sword, saying, pay the taxes or I'm going to cut your head off, is not really the primary way we see power. We do see, obviously, guns, violence, military, everywhere. But we got to understand, most of us are not shooting people, and most of us are exerting power in different ways. And this is where Foucault starts talking about the discourses of power, the technologies of self, the bio power. I don't want to go into all this theory except to say that when, let's just give an example. You go to the doctor. I went to the doctor yesterday because I got a throat thing. Forgive me, folks, if I cough a little bit. I got a throat thing and I got the cold. It's just Chicago, winter, whatever, and I'm going there and the minute I walk into the office, I am submitting myself to a relationship where I'm the patient and she's the doctor, and I'm going to listen to the doctor, and I've already said, hey, give me some help here. And there's a gaze there. I love the way Foucault develops the gaze. I love the way Laura Mulvey, in her work in the 70s, talks about the male gaze just by the way a man, or a cultural construct of maleness, looks at a woman, and the woman sees herself in the gaze of a man. All of a sudden, she is ensconced in a power relationship, and she might even think she wants this. This is the complexity of power. So I give the example, and I think it's the second chapter where you, or maybe the first chapter, I can't remember. You walk into a church service, and already there's all these things going on. You know what I'm saying? [00:12:36] Speaker A: Yes. [00:12:37] Speaker B: Somebody, a greeter comes up and says, dave, we're so great to have you. Can we take your name and phone number and send you a welcoming gift? This is kind of creepy, but there's no gun there. I have a choice. The next thing you know, I use this example of this service in the immediate area where they say, please don't make a decision whether you want to come to this church by just coming once, come at least four times. It's assuming I even am making a decision. And before you know it, the pastor is giving an altar call. And the minute I do an altar call and go up there, I'm now ensconced, firmly absorbed into a power relationship, giving this man authority or this interpretation of scripture authority, and I didn't even know it. And this is the way power works on multiple levels. When you go in for a job interview, when you get your review at the end of the year, when you give a job review, everything assumes certain cultural constructs of power that we have assumed by just going into the room. [00:13:46] Speaker A: Yeah, the example of the church service, and that you kind of pull this thread throughout that chapter. And I just thought, oh, dear, I've been in each one of these situations, but when you specifically sit and look at it through the lens of power and ask, how does that feel? How must that feel? What are the dynamics going on here? It really caused me to pause and reconsider even those small aspects of culture that we just don't necessarily always think about. [00:14:23] Speaker B: No, Foucault would say, and Judith Butler would say, and multiple other theorists would say, you're not even aware of it. It's happening. You're not aware of it. And you actually might think you want this or like this. And we're becoming awoken to all the like. Me, too movement is a statement of the fact of a lot of things women couldn't say but felt 20 years ago and couldn't actually quite figure it out until, oh, someone else is feeling that, too. Oh, my goodness. And here's the thing. I worked on Wall street in the financial services industry. I'm one of those theologians that didn't go directly from my seminary into my PhD. I actually lived this. I was in Wall Street. I saw the way women were treated every day, and I saw that actually, they didn't mind go, why? We have all these threads and themes and cultures of Wall street, where power is being. This is why that Weinstein guy can't figure out what was I doing. I thought women wanted me know, be sexually aggressive with. That's. It's all power scripts. And if we don't wake up and start understanding these things, that we've got to be Jesus in these. [00:15:55] Speaker A: So it's complex. And I would interrupt and say, just as a woman, and say, yeah, but we don't want that. Right? And I think that's the point, is that we don't want that. We do mind it. And for me, we do mind it. And also, at the same time, understand that that is the script. To use the word that you use, that is the script. I'll give an example, just real quickly in this. As a woman, I saw a tweet or something a few years ago that I had to point out to my husband, because he's a runner now, and I had always been the runner. So we used to live in a college town in Oklahoma, and I would run by myself a lot, mid 20s. I'm kind of a smaller framed woman. And every time I would run, it was just a little college town or whatever. Anytime I would see a man walking or running, does not matter what he looked like. He could be 70, he could be 17, he could be white, black, brown, whatever. It doesn't matter. I would, in my head, always have a plan. What if this guy turns around? Or what if this guy catches me and it's not this long, elaborate. I'm not some sort of psychopath or something, but it is just an awareness of my vulnerability, is how I've put it. As a woman, I am particularly vulnerable when I am alone with. No, we've never had weapons in our house. Or anything like that. Plus, I like to joke and quote my dad. My dad is a martial artist, was a martial artist when I was growing up. And he used to tell me, don't ever bring anything into a fight you wouldn't want used against you. So I've never packed heat. I've never done anything like that. But the point is, I feel vulnerable as a woman running. And I would always have this moment of, if this guy turns around, could I scream? Could I get to my phone? Is there someone. Are we in a busy area? Is it dusk? Is it dawn? All of these kinds of things. And I saw a tweet a few years ago as I was trying to explain this to my husband, and she said, I'm running tonight at close to sunset, and a man passes me, and he says, nice weather. And she says, and as a woman, I never know. Is he being sincere or is he trying to kill me? [00:18:28] Speaker B: Yeah, I never know. [00:18:31] Speaker A: I never know. And I said, that's the vulnerability of a woman. But it's not just power. But it is power also. It's also physique and all of these kinds of things. But it's the script. [00:18:47] Speaker B: Yeah. So this is just one aspect of the ways culture scripts us, and so much of it is unspoken about the way the power relationships work. So Judith Butler will go great into the great depths on patriarchy and the way it is scripted. Iterated, she'll say performed. She uses words, subjection. We get our subjects formed, our understandings of our very selves formed in relation to a power relationship. And we think she uses this word. Normalized. No. Excuse me. Naturalized. This is the way it is. This is naturalized. It goes so far beyond. As a male talking to a female, I'm speaking with limited understanding, so be careful, Fitch, what you're saying right now. But I think it goes beyond just the vulnerability awareness. We are being scripted into a script, and as a woman, I'm supposed to act this way in relation to a man. I'm supposed to see myself in a certain way. Oh, and this is natural. This is just the way it is. So toxic masculinity in certain parts of the evangelical church, that's just the way it is. And we don't have the tools to unwind the power at work there. And that. That power, in the words of this book, is worldly power. Not God's power, not the way God works. Clean people. [00:20:30] Speaker A: That's right. Yeah. I'm glad you clarified. I'm glad you said that, because, yes, that is true. I don't want to get us necessarily on that rabbit trail, but as a woman who's been in the evangelical world for a really long time, when you say that this is just the way it is, and then we see those other dynamics that feminists could talk about, feminist theologians could talk about, other cultural scholars could talk about, about how sometimes women end up promoting toxic masculinity and patriarchy and things like that, especially white women. And all this because of these scripts, the naturalization, sometimes the protection that's offered. I almost want to use that in quotes, but some of those things. Okay, David, my fault. I've gone to, no, it's great stuff. Completely off some of this, but power. Yeah. So you started to talk about and the words that you use in this book. I think let's use some of the vocabulary because I can see that we'll come back to it and add on and remind me, you talk about power over, you talk about power with and you talk about power under. Those are the ones that I'm thinking of right now. Help me if I've left some out and then define what you mean when you say those things so that when we talk about them, we're kind of all on the same page. [00:21:59] Speaker B: Well, yeah. So power over is this idea that power is coercion. And we have various ways know, back in the feudalist periods of medieval Europe, it's easy. I'm going to bring out this sword and I'm going to kill you with my knights if you don't do what I tell you to do. Power over. But Foucault said, we don't do that anymore. What we do is we, or Nietzsche said it before Foucault, but Foucault brilliantly analyzes it from cultural studies and perspectives, and he says, we don't do that anymore. Actually, we're taught to think that this is what's natural. And this is, by the way, Judith Butler, the great queer theorist, basically works with Foucault to help us understand how we are naturalized into ways of thinking about power. So I don't go into my boss and say, hey, you're going to give me a paycheck and I'm going to do whatever you want me to do. But that's basically what goes on. But it's all very, we're going to talk about it. We're going to do this. So after about a week of working with my boss, I think actually it was my idea to do what my boss wanted me to do. Okay, so that's Foucault what did I call that in the book? I called it power within. [00:23:24] Speaker A: Okay. Yeah. [00:23:24] Speaker B: Because it's within the discourse within the systems. Oh, folks, my wife is now out with my snowblower. Okay. I don't know what this says about power and my relationship between my wife and doing. Okay, I'm joking. Listen, folks, I'm joking. She's doing the male job right now, and I'm upset. Okay. But anyways, that's Foucault. Power within and then power to do something. And this is the idea that in basically second wave feminism, but also emerged in third and fourth wave feminism, that we can give to someone, power to. We can empower somebody to do something. I am very cautious about that because a, who's given the power to who and then who has the power? I've had people. I go into this in the book. I've had people say, fitz, you're a white male. It's true. By the way you walk in the room, you have power. And I believe they're talking about worldly power. Use your worldly power to help people who don't have worldly power. Okay, I get it. And I actually think some positive things can come from that, but very limited positive things can come from that. And worse, you're going to trust white male Fitch to know who to give the power to and how to manage it? I think Fitch might have his own problems, and he might be perpetuating those power problems on somebody else. Okay, I've seen it happen a million times. Forgive me for this little riff, but white males are power mongers, and they like to give away power and then hold on to it and then tell everybody what they did. Folks, we need a different way of looking at this. So that's power two. And then I get to power with. Now, this is nonviolent power. This is Martin Luther King. This is Gandhi. There's a hundred million examples of power as nonviolence. MLK said, there's power among, and we need to join together. He had a trust that there was God at work in the relational dynamics of power with. Okay, but even with MLK, and I think I used three other examples there, what happened was black power, Stokely Carmichael, little bit of impatience. John Lewis was kicked out of the student nonviolent coordinating committees because he was too much of a nonviolence advocate. And power with, strangely, can become or become subservient to power over. I detail the way, and I say this. There is no power with. Unless there is a different relationship to power. My agency, my selfhood, the way I engage power, has got to change in order for a different kind of power to be released. And this different power is the power and the presence of the resurrected Lord among us at work that once we submit to and come under, this is where I call it underpower. We can cooperate with God, and God can become a whole different way of getting things done. And so that's the first chapter where I dissect all the various ways of power at work in the world. Was that good summary? [00:27:26] Speaker A: That was great. With your wife blowing the snow. That's all right. My mom was push mowing the lawn. This is what she was push mowing the lawn when she was pregnant with me all those years ago. I did not grow up in a house, which was man jobs and woman jobs, that's for sure. [00:27:40] Speaker B: I see. [00:27:41] Speaker A: But here's what I'm thinking on that. Because as you ended with this power of the resurrected Jesus, and then I think this is because I'm just saying out loud where I have been and where I think many of us are. Yes, say it. And then I want you to take us backwards, because then we look at things and we say, and this is me, and this is part of what I'm still processing. We say, okay, yes, we hear this power, but we have it, Fitch. We have it as christians because we know how to wield it. We know how to use it, because we are empowered by the Holy Spirit. We have discernment. We have all these kinds of things. And so worldly power is safe with me because I love Jesus and he loves me. And so I know how to do this. And this is where I think it's particularly important to go backwards, because I will tell you, when I was sitting in a history class at Fuller, really fabulous world Christianity history with a wonderful history professor, and I'm learning about Constantine in depth for the first time. I had, of course, was familiar with the name. Can I ask who? [00:29:18] Speaker B: The professor. Oh, yeah. Okay. We love you, Vince. [00:29:26] Speaker A: We love Vince. Fabulous history professor. I'm learning about Constantine for the first time again. I'd been exposed, but we're really having some good discussions. We're reading and writing. And I began my seminary career in the summer of 2020 when nothing else was happening in the world. And so this has been since then. And all I can think about is, oh, my goodness, this dude's Trump. This is all I can think about. And then we're even having the discussion. Oh, my goodness. Was his conversion real? What was happening? All of these wonderful conversations that happen in a classroom setting. But I'm saying that to say I think it's so important that we're aware of Christianity's relationship to worldly power to use to canopiepus, on the same language here, Christianity's relationship to worldly power. This wasn't something that Trump invented. This wasn't know you mentioned, I think [unk]'s book, Jesus and John Wayne, that kind of gives us a more recent wonderful history, historical telling. It's not wonderful history, their telling of history. It's remarkable and wonderful. But to go back and say, this isn't a new struggle for us, this isn't a new struggle for us. We have always been in this. We have always struggled as a people with this and our relationship to power. And I would say one of those things for me that is very noticeable, is that we, for some reason, and you bring this out in parts of your book, too, we for some reason think that we're capable, we're going to take this worldly power and because we, I don't know, have someone has hit us over the head with a wand or something, we're the ones, we're the people who can do this. And we have seen that this is so obviously and hideously, in many cases not the case for. [00:31:27] Speaker B: This. There's a long history here that you've already alluded to. And of course, for some of us, Anabaptists, all went wrong with Constantine, of course, and Christians align themselves with worldly power to get God's work done. [00:31:44] Speaker A: That's right. [00:31:46] Speaker B: But, folks, it's not just Constantine. And as Alexis has already alluded to, it's a very complex subject. Constantine, I deal with it a little bit in some of the footnotes. If you want to get the real nitty gritty history, academics read the footnotes of the book. [00:32:02] Speaker A: Can I just say, I wish they were endnotes in this, in notes. I wish they were footnotes. Actually, page. [00:32:12] Speaker B: Another rabbit trail, because all of us hate endnotes. We want the footnotes. [00:32:17] Speaker A: Why do the publish and yours are endnotes, at least in the copy I have anyway? [00:32:22] Speaker B: Yeah, they're endnotes. I don't know why they do it. There's reasons publishers do that. I don't want to get into it right now. And I don't know, but they're so fabulous. Yes, but anyways. [00:32:33] Speaker A: Read the end. [00:32:34] Speaker B: There has been a non stop blurring and unblurring. I try to make very clear that there is a distinction between worldly power and godly power. I justify that distinction both biblically and historically. But there's also a blurring that goes on. It's like we cannot help ourselves. Oh, my goodness. Constantine loves me. I think I'm going to use him to get the world saved. Oh, my goodness. Trump loves me. Oh, my goodness. Trump said he'll accomplish this particular task that I've been wanting presidents to accomplish for years. For Jesus, I'm going to vote for. Well, he's a jerk. No, it doesn't matter. Well, he's a misogynist. No, he's actually a rapist. No, it doesn't matter. He's going to get this, and before you know it, we blurred it and it never goes well. When we use worldly power to accomplish God's purposes, there are uses of worldly power. I go into this in the book, for instance. I don't know if we've noticed, but not everybody in the world's a Christian. In order to make space for God's power, you got to be submitted to and discerning of the power of God in the midst. And if you're not there, God can't work. God will not coerce himself into your life, your social situations. He needs cooperation. So there will be me. Beth Felker Jones at northern seminars are going to get mad for me for saying it that way. He needs our cooperation. Okay. He doesn't need our cooperation. He so chooses by his nature to work with us, not over us, because that's who God is. Okay. Anyways, all that to say, there will be times when we use worldly power. There will be times. Apostle Paul says christians shouldn't sue each other. Why in the world would we hire a lawyer to solve a dispute? We are going to judge the angels. By the way, when he says judge the angels, it doesn't mean judge over the angels. It means we're going to be discerners of the power of God. Why would we do what the world does whenever we get in an argument and sue each other? Okay, but the fact is, if there's someone who is not a Christian, who is trying to do something really bad and wrong and unjust to me, I will hire a lawyer. And hopefully we mitigate. We lessen the consequences. But that's all it ever does. It just preserves it never redeems, restores, heals. That's God's power. All worldly power will do was somehow preserve the sanity of the moment. That's it. And so, folks, if all the church wants to do is preserve what already is and keep it from killing each other. Worldly power is possible to use, and it does do some things, but it won't heal the world. That's God, and that's his power. So with that little riff, I'm just saying there's a constant blur. We're always tempted, oh, can Donald Trump get done God's work? No, he can't. But let's not forget the civil rights movement used legislation to create rights and protect black persons and other persons of color in this country. And it did achieve a preserving of some sanity. But what it did not do is it did not heal, transform, overcome, disrupt the racism that is endemic in this country. John Perkins said, that's satanic evil, and it will take a supernatural act of God to overcome. We, the church, got to be involved in these places bringing the power of God to heal the racisms of our land. [00:36:50] Speaker A: I like the example that you used in the book. You paint a little word picture describing to help understand this worldly power by talking about a traffic light. There are certain things that it can do and it's kind of designed to do. Now I'm getting picky with my like, is it designed? And then we have the whole thing of like, is this gen one or gen three? What is this with some of these theological things of power? But to say worldly power as it exists, the job maybe that it can do is more like a traffic light. It helps preserve some of the order, as you've talked about. It can provide some protections in those ways. But the redemptive work, the healing work, I would even say, like, this kind of true justice work, these things are not going to be accomplished through worldly power. And you tell me if I'm incorrect. I think when you're talking about the blurring, one of the arguments that I came out with after reading it, it may not be what you were trying to say exactly, but even in our blurring of the powers, the worldly power and godly power, that work will not be done by christians using the means of worldly power. Trying to get that done, even as believers, what I felt like I was hearing was, we're not going to use worldly power as the tool, or this isn't going to be what accomplishes this healing work that we're actually after. This is what we want to see. This is the work we want to see done in the world. And us trying to grasp for and use that worldly power, I don't know, in the name of Jesus, is not what's going to actually accomplish that work. [00:38:53] Speaker B: Yeah, sorry, folks, if we're getting a little nerdy here, but I already confessed being an Anabaptist three times already. There are certain Calvinists, certain reformed people, certain. I don't even want to get any more specific than that because I'll get some people mad at me who think that government is not a preservatory power but an order of creation. So this was God's intent to accomplish his good in the world. I'm arguing against that. I think it's a preservatory power. This is the difference between Emile Bruner and Carl Bart or something like that. You know, the whole argument, Luther led us to Hitler. You know, that whole argument, I allude to it in the know, we've got to let government do what government does and stay out of it because Jesus only matters to my soul. And so the church will take care of your soul, and the government will take care of the systems. And what happened was, excuse me, folks, the german Christians basically said, oh, Hitler is of God. And they seated him, the authority of political power. And that's how we got World War II Nazi Germany, folks. We cannot, in my opinion, and I go into this, it's quite nuanced. Can't really get into it in a podcast today. But we cannot do that. We're in danger of doing that. No, we're doing that with Donald Trump. We cannot do that. God's power is different than worldly power, but some things can be preserved. And this is where I get into my arguments with my calvinist friends. No, this is not common grace. This is the preservatory grace of God holding us in line, making space for God's work to be done so we can preserve civil rights for black persons against the evils of white racism. But will we heal the land? No, actually, we'll probably have a new Jim Crow. We'll probably have new forms of racism. Unless the church gets busy, gets present, opens space, have conversations, allow the Holy Spirit to convict and realign the very way we think we look. We live together in Jesus name. And that's where I'm pushing for the church to get busy and quit giving this job to the government. The government. Hey, all you christians who are working in government, fine, but just don't expect too much. Do your work without trying to be God. All you policemen out there and policewomen, fine, hold things in line, but watch yourself. Okay? Yes. Do not overstep. This is the thing. If worldly power is not kept in line and kept in his place to serve, and often this happens in the church because we believe we're people of God at work to do God's work. Once that line's crossed, all sorts of bad things. I'm now God. I can do anything I want, including kill somebody, because I was God. I was doing God's work. And this is where abuse of power, abuse of all kinds of horrific ways happens. And I talk about so many good leaders go bad with the hubris syndrome when they think that they are God or they're doing God's work, and all the rails go off, all the guardrails go off. And that's the problem we're in today, folks. So can we be Jesus again in the world? Can we be christians again in the world? Can we see that God's at work healing the world and participate instead of giving it to government? Government will do its job, thank you very much. But can we enter the world as God's agents for peace, reconciliation, justice, renewal, healing? It's happened before. It can happen again. [00:43:18] Speaker A: Let's bring it to the micro level a little bit from government, because I'm hearing what you're saying, and I think that sometimes that feels far off and sometimes it feels theoretical. And arguably, as you mentioned, many times, it's very real and people are passionate about it. Like, I don't care about Trump as a person. I want these certain things done, these certain tasks accomplished, these certain policies enacted. And so I'll align myself in that way. But on the smaller level, I'm thinking about churches, I'm thinking about families, I'm thinking about institutions. I'm thinking about christians who maybe I'll say it this way, because many of our organizations, whether they're families or institutions or churches or otherwise, have modeled our structures after hierarchical structures of worldly power. So we have CEO pastors who come in, and it's really dangerous because often it's a person, a usually man, usually white man, who is at the top of a hierarchy. It's an.org chart where everything goes down. It looks like a tree, an inverted tree, and everything goes down from this person. We've heard this person called an apostolic leader in some situations where basically the buck stops with him. Everything is there, but it's a business in some ways. And so this person, because, again, kind of my little magic wand, this person is a Christian, and so he has wisdom, and so he can be trusted with this worldly power. And then what happens is instead of being able to, if I get stopped by the police, because I was speeding, instead of being able to plead my case to someone, instead of being able to say the sign was out, it wasn't actually a school zone time or whatever, there's no workaround for any of that. Because then he gets to say, and often does say, well, God told me, xyz, or the Holy Spirit said this about you, or the Holy Spirit said this about me, or scripture says this. And so the blurring becomes fully enmeshed in those spaces. And I will say, to be fair, it can be a church, it can be an institution, it can be an organization, it can be a family where those things happen. And because God has ordained someone who looks in a certain way to be in a certain position of power, we look at that and say, this is the God ordained way. This is the way it's supposed to be. Maybe our calvinist friends would say, yes, because this is the kind of thing that was ordained from the beginning. But whatever it looks like, we know that worldly power is coercive. And then it ends up being even more devastatingly so. Because who can, as you said, who can go against God? There's no court for you. You don't get to petition your ticket. You don't get to do any of those things because you either fall in line in accordance with this power or you are in danger of being in the doghouse with God. Who wants that? [00:47:23] Speaker B: That's amazing. That description, Alexis, was amazing because that describes how the blurring works. And I'm telling you, I know that a lot of people, when they read reckoning with power are going to be disturbed. Frankly, I'm so used to talking in these terms and I've been so used to working these things out over the last 30 years, I can't imagine any other way of thinking about power. But some people might say, fitch, you're limiting my ability to go use government or legislation to do justice. And what else is there? Okay, that's the imagination problem that I'm trying to open up for rethinking. But when you talk about the situation you just talked about, which I think every person on this podcast, every person in the United States who they should be listening to this podcast, they felt that they know that they don't know what to do with that. Again and again and again. I just run into it everywhere, folks, are we going to come to Jesus or not? And say, this is not your way? And so when I do get to chapter six, I describe a whole bunch of practices. I probably should write another book for chapter six. But I tried to just show the way the church lives differently. [00:49:05] Speaker A: But I fear I'm going to interrupt because I want you to talk about that. And I want you to talk about the imagination, because this is where I found myself. I found myself kind of pushing back in my own head and my annotations with stuff up until chapter six and including chapter six, because. And I think imagination is a very good word for this. We have imagined things. One. [00:49:33] Speaker B: Yes. [00:49:33] Speaker A: So I'm even going to call out. You had a few books that you kind of went through some of the things. Crouch's book, which I have not read. He's been on the podcast for a different one. But I would even say Dominique Gilliard, I have raved about his book. I will continue probably to rave about his book, by the way, David, I. [00:49:52] Speaker B: Want you to continue to rave about. [00:49:54] Speaker A: His book because I love. And. But I loved his book, particularly now I have a different getting. We're coming back. I'm sorry for interrupting, but I have a little bit different language now. But I would say Dominique's book was. And I'll put it in the show notes so folks can know what we're talking about. But Dominique's book, subversive witness, is the one that took my imagination probably to the limit of where my imagination was regarding this conversation with power. And I love what he has to say about it. Now, what I will say is, after reading your book and wrestling with some of the things that you bring up, what I will say is, now, I wonder what other things might be out there. What am I not imagining when it comes to power? So I will say, for me, I'm not ready to discard Dominique's, what he says in his book, but I am beginning to say what is out there to imagine regarding power as a Christian? Even some of my language, I'm careful know I don't even want to say some of the things that I've said before or deal with it or use it or whatever, because I feel like even those can be limiting maybe, in what I'm able to imagine. So that was a little bit of a caveat, but I want you to talk more, because I think that is the question is, yeah, but then, practically, what does this look like? Okay, fine, let's meet Jesus. Let's bring him back. Let's do these kinds of things. But what we have are these structures that are in place. What we have are presidents and police officers and legislators and CEO pastors and heads of families, if you're in that camp and whatever, these are the things that we have, these are the systems that we live in. Okay, David, tell us your ideas on that. [00:51:59] Speaker B: First of all, I tried to be careful. The reason why I went into Andy Crouch and Diane Langberg and Dominic. I think those are the only three. [00:52:15] Speaker A: Those are the ones, yeah. And all kind of different aspects of power that they talk about. [00:52:22] Speaker B: Different angles. [00:52:23] Speaker A: Different angles, that's right. [00:52:24] Speaker B: But still, okay. In my opinion, coming out of the protestant imagination for lack of an understanding of a power of a different kind, I don't know if Andy would agree with me. I've been in places with Andy. We didn't talk about this. We talked about other things. But I know he doesn't quite understand. The Anabaptists are the most folks. Anabaptists are the most misunderstood, marginalized theologians in the world. Okay, nobody gives us, oh, you're so impractical, Reinhold Niebuhr. Come on. Jesus is not practical when we got a war on our Dave, you know. Okay, we're sick of hearing it, folks. But I wanted to show, be very careful to show the assumptions of power at work. Diane, of the three gives, I think the most close gets closest to tapping into that Jesus power presence at work, if we will just allow him to. But even she, by the way, starts out with the Genesis one through three thing, which is always a dead giveaway for us. Anabaptist. Oh, you're doing it again. You're doing the reformed thing again. Okay, but having said that, yeah, well, I had a little story. I forget which chapter. I'll go talk amongst pastors, say 50, 60 pastors in the room. And after like a day and a half of working through issues of theology, culture and mission, we'll sit there and I'll go, okay, is this possible in your local church? Let's go through the top ten reasons. Give me one reason why this will never work in your local church. And I take the top ten and we go, well, the elders will fire me if I say things like this. They will give me a job review and say, you're not doing anything. Everything about the way we think about power and leadership is built on the auspices of worldly power, and it's why we're in the mess we're in. Maybe I overstated it. It's one of the reasons why, one of the big reasons why we're in this mess we're in. And so we have to disrupt an open space for another way. The first thing I want to say is, your sentiments are virtually anybody who reads this book from a protestant and or evangelical perspective is going to say, no way, this will never work here. I can't even understand what you're saying. What we evangelicals do is we put the Holy Spirit's power at work inside my soul. And that's it. He's not at work out here. He's not at work in these social spaces. This is the places I've seen the Holy Spirit most at work. When he's working inside, I'm going, is that the Holy Spirit? But when people are changed and systems are changed and people are disrupted, I'm going, whoa. That was the Holy Spirit. Nothing else can explain that. But we have no imagination to make space for God to work in our lives, in our churches, in our neighborhoods, in our town hall, ordinance committees, wherever we go and however we go there and be present, faithfully present to what he's doing and participate. The first thing I want to do is just acknowledge that this is going to be the response, the first response to my book for a lot of people. But then I offer in chapter six just a bunch of things we do. I mean, we don't have time to go into all of them. I think we're already on an hour, aren't we, folks? We could talk for 100 hours on this subject. We'd still be probably need more time. But let me just run through a few real quick. I'm grabbing the 6th chapter, embodied presence in a public demonstration. Okay? That's straight off the playbook of Martin Luther King, by the way, who called it create constructive tension. Okay? Now a lot of people think, oh, that's a social justice move. Actually, no, it's not. You can do it justice. I wish I could tell a story about a church that did the George Floyd march that I was a part of. Oh, we're done. We did the march. No, we're not. There were people that were touched, police, persons of color, white persons. In this neighbor, I can tell you Jesus was at work, but we had no imagination. We say a prayer before our George Floyd march in our town in front of our church building, and we pray. And then a little kid, I think six years old, raises his hand and we got about like 200 people. He says, are the police going to hurt me? And everybody hears it. And the policeman comes right up to the little boy, we're not going to hurt you. We're here to help you. And Jesus is at work. But we had no imagination to take that the next step further, bring people together over a brew and say, what's going on in our town? What's going on in our police departments, what's going on in our ordinance village hall? How can we come together, forgive one another, love one another, make space for one another to get to know one another, love one another. That's the work of the Holy Spirit. So anyways, embodied presence. Okay, people who are yawning right now going, oh, we already do that. The practice. Here's an interesting one. The Igthus meeting. That's my name for it seems good. To the Holy Spirit and to us. Acts, chapter 15. I got a whole process for when we get into a conflict, we don't just go nuts and start hurling stuff at each other on social media. We gather in person. We listen to the gifts. I got a whole way of doing this, and I tell the story about a dude who, on an issue that we were struggling with in our church, had migraine headaches for years and always walked around with a crease in his forehead, stressed out, intense. But after this meeting, even though he didn't agree with everything he said, I can trust the Holy Spirit. And what's going on in this church. And his migraines went away, folks. Holy Spirit. Jesus wants to work. And our congregation was transformed. Multiethnic church. [00:59:27] Speaker A: Oh, can we go back to igthus? [00:59:31] Speaker B: It doesn't really work as a word very well. [00:59:33] Speaker A: It doesn't? Yeah, it was a little challenging, but I would say one thing that stuck out to me on that, and you do have a whole process, and it's not just one meeting. And a lot of people talk, and the invitation is open. And correct me if I'm on any of these things, but one of the things that I really enjoyed about part of that process and how I could starting to move my imagination was that when kind of the votes happen, for lack of a better word, that it's not a binary yay nay, that it's on a spectrum. And so the example that you give, if I'm remembering correctly, is five is kind of like I'm 100% on board, and four is kind of like I'm not there yet, but you use that language. But I trust the Holy Spirit in this movement. I trust the Holy Spirit in my community, in the people who have gathered for this. And so then it kind of goes down to one or zero or whatever it is on this scale. But I like even that because of the voice that it gives, because of the opportunity to listen, that it affords and for people to be in varying places and for that to be acknowledged when certain moves are taking place. So, anyway, I just wanted to throw that out there, because I was by chapter six going, okay, David, what do we. But, so that was helpful, and I really appreciated that help with my imagination. [01:00:55] Speaker B: By the way, that's an old anabaptist practice that I kind of modernized for our church. All right. So there's a lot of things going on here, but mutual submission is always something that gets everybody upset. People think to submit one to another out of reverence for Christ. Ephesians, chapter five, if I got that right, five or four. I always get my fives mixed up. [01:01:21] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:01:21] Speaker B: Anyways, people think that that's a dangerous thing. I would never, by the way, ask anybody who's abused to go to their abuser alone and submit to their abuser. That's just so not the way the practice of submission works in the New Testament. You bring somebody with you, you speak truth and you say, I submit to you. Now, in our leadership meetings, let's say fitch has, we kind of know who our gifts are, who's the apostle, who's the evangelist, who's the healer, who's the pastor. But whoever sees the issue and the problem or hears the problem, or we got a decision to make, someone makes a proposal and says, I propose a and b. I submit to you the rest of the leadership team, because the five fold gifting is a role that, the way that leads the church is important to me. It's too thick to get into right now, but then it just opens up the conversation. By the way, submitting is an almost okay. People are going to, if you don't know me and if you don't know what I'm saying, you're going to make over assumptions about this. But to submit to someone is the act of strength, act of leadership, act of, I know who I am, what I'm doing, where I've been. I see this now. I submit and listen to you. Do you know how many leaders don't know how to listen to somebody who disagrees with them, who don't know how to submit and allow the Holy Spirit to take a proposal, shift it, change it, deepen it. But that's mutual submission in leadership. I have three or four pages on that in chapter six. It breaks the hold of worldly power. And it's an act. It's a practice we're called to again and again throughout the New Testament, throughout Jesus words to us. I could go on, but I'll say a few other things. Women in ministry, right now this seems old hat to some of us who have been used to women in ministry or extolling women to be pastors alongside men for, I don't know, 30, 40 years. I don't know. It's not even an issue for me, but it still is an issue out there for some people. But here's my fear. And if the ministry structure is power over, which it often is with men and women are invited into that power structure on the terms of men, we're not really doing what leadership and ministry, according to scripture, New Testament is doing. It's saying women and men together in ministry mutually, and we're in this mutual relationship with all other people that we're leading. It's not power over. And so I fear women. If you're one of these churches that is inviting women into pastoral leadership for the first time, it's a disruptive event to bring us out of worldly power, into power of mutuality. That's in the book. I can't really go into depths on everything because it'll take another hour. But I just think these are all things that are happening that can either go one way or another, reinsconscing worldly power or opening space for mutuality in the power of the Holy Spirit. [01:05:08] Speaker A: Yes, I want to say real quickly, just give a couple of examples that I hope I don't regret giving later. But when I was reading through those sections in chapter six, I had a couple of thoughts. Number one, for those of us who are so where the hierarchical power over hasn't just been cultural for us, meaning like secular cultural, and examples of president, vice president, that kind of thing, corporate as well, but for those of us who have been discipled to believe that this is the structure that God would have ordained, as I mentioned earlier, whether it's in a family or, and it's in a church or something like that, not only many of us don't have an imagination for some of the things that you're suggesting, but there's also an area there where it feels, and I'm going to use this word, where some would argue this is actually like a sinful way of doing things, or this is not of God to do things in a certain way. So I'll give an example. My husband edits this so he can completely cut it out if he wants to because it uses him. But we were in a congregation previously where my husband was being asked to take some sort of leadership role. And of course, in the way that it was, it was like, kind of like we love women, and so it's like you, but it's you as a couple, but it's really like you as the man. And so he's kind of being informally know after he's been nominated for this certain position and he is being asked, like in your family, basically, who wears the pants in your family? And he won't say the right answer, which is him. He won't do it. He's using this whole mutual submission bull crap, right? And he's saying, well, it depends. In some areas, Alexis has more wisdom. She's had discernment in the know, blah, blah, blah. And so we would defer to her in some areas that might fall to me. In many areas it's both of right discussing these things together and coming up with a decision together because we're married and whatever. And the person who's interviewing him twice, two different people are coming at him from all of these different angles, trying to basically, like you didn't quite understand the question. What we mean is the buck stops where or if a decision has to be. And he's like, these are made up scenarios. But even still, I'm not going to give you the answer that you want. Anyway, he wasn't further pursued for that position. That's one thing. But then an example from my life. Several years ago I was in an organization and I wasn't a member of the church, but it was at this kind of parachurch ministry that was housed inside of this other church. And I was asked to come in and kind of co lead this season of this organization. And I turned it down because my discipleship inside of white evangelicalism said to me, there has to be, quote, one head of this. And so I turned this down because I had no vision and actually thought this is doomed to fail. I'm so embarrassed. But this has been now over a decade ago. But I had no vision for anything. Like even just using those mutual submission, like what's the big deal? Anyway? There's been some evolution in some of my theology and things like that. But I just want to say that people in us christians, I think particularly since this is the context that I know we're all over the map on some of these things. And at the same time I think many of us are operating from this one paradigm. We might say I don't fit in on this particular part of the paradigm, but this is the paradigm that we know. There's just kind of a spectrum within which we operate it. At least that's kind of how I see it and how I relate as my evolution has kind of come. [01:09:05] Speaker B: Yeah, it just illustrates how well if you're a male like me. And you grew up in the structures. You're just used to having power and you don't even know it. And what are you doing? Why are you saying that I'm the pastor if you're a woman growing up? And they think, how do I navigate this? And I guess I have to defer and whatever. And we don't think about the power and presence of the Holy Spirit and how folks at Northern Seminary, in the contextual program, we're always talking about Christendom and how in Christendom when everybody was a Christian, the blurring of the two powers was accepted and got things done. Why? Because everybody already agreed. I mean, 1952 people would come in to my father or my grandfather's church and my dad would say one thing, and of course it's true, no one disagrees. And we go on with her and there's no problems and everything's great, and the school systems agree with us and everybody agree we don't have any problems. Well, we are so not there anymore, and we're needing the power in the presence of Jesus to anew. We can't go on in the old structures of Christ. Has anybody seen all the reports of the churches shrinking, shrinking, shrinking, dying. No one's listening anymore to your presumed power. It's not working. Can we make space again for Jesus like they did those 1st 200 years, like it's broken out every 100 and 5200 years again and again? Can we do it? I think that's what we need. That's what this book's goal is. But it's a bit complex theology, especially in the footnotes. But we need to think through this issue of power. Seriously, folks. [01:10:53] Speaker A: That's right. And just for clarity, the Christendom of the 1950s was it may have worked kind of in quotes in some ways, but it wasn't a good thing. This is precisely what you're arguing against. [01:11:04] Speaker B: Well, it worked for those of us who were white Christians. [01:11:10] Speaker A: Sure. [01:11:11] Speaker B: There's a whole nother discussion there. You keep opening up these rabbit trails. [01:11:15] Speaker A: I know, and I need you to end us, David. I need you to bring it in. I need you to pretend that the class is about to end. Leave us with some sort of profound question that we need to think about maybe, or something like that. I think appetites have hopefully been wetted during this conversation, but I need you to bring us in. Prof. And round us out. [01:11:38] Speaker B: All right. I'm just going to read my favorite text of the day. [01:11:42] Speaker A: Wonderful. [01:11:43] Speaker B: In regard to this subject, Paul says in Ephesians, chapter one, I pray that you might know I'm skipping a few verses here. What is the immeasurable greatness of his power? For us who believe according to the working of his great power? This is Ephesians, chapter one. God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and power and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named. I pray for everybody listening here that we might know the immeasurable greatness of his power, not the limited preservatory. Getting small things done. Worldly power. That's where we need to go. Hopefully this book gets us on the way. [01:12:49] Speaker A: Amen. Thank you. So. Oh, again, this is reckoning with power, why the church fails when it's on the wrong side of power by David Fitch I am grateful for the conversation. When is this out, David? [01:13:07] Speaker B: January. The end of January. January 30 or something. [01:13:10] Speaker A: Perfect. All right, well, I'll put where listening to my dog. [01:13:13] Speaker B: I don't know what's going on. Probably the snowblowers are getting crazy. [01:13:16] Speaker A: That's all right. Mine was snoring earlier. Hopefully she didn't too much. Thank you so much for joining me. This has just been such a pleasure and a gift. I'm so appreciative. [01:13:27] Speaker B: Hey, I so enjoyed being with you, and I hope we meet along the way. This has been great. [01:13:31] Speaker A: Thank you. The links for all the resources mentioned in today's episode can be found in the show notes, music and podcast production by Seth Busetti. Be sure to give us a review on iTunes and subscribe at your favorite podcast listening app. You can also visit us at. That makes total sense.