Church Potluck: A Smorgasbord of Christian Curiosity
Church Potluck serves up thoughtful, friendly, informal conversation at the intersection of Christianity and contemporary culture. Just like a church potluck, we offer variety: a variety of topics, a variety of academic disciplines, and a variety of Christian traditions. Guests are friends and colleagues who are also experts in the fields of sociology, political science, theology, philosophy, divinity, and more.
Church Potluck: A Smorgasbord of Christian Curiosity
Deifying Politicians, Hearing God's Voice, and Age Gaps in Middle-East Views
In this episode of Church Potluck, we dive into three thought-provoking themes with Dr. Christy Snider and Dr. Michael Bailey. First, we explore whether it is fair to say that some Republicans are deifying Trump, drawing from Thomas Edsall’s New York Times piece, "The Deification of Trump." Next, we question the trustworthiness of religious callings based on hearing God’s voice, drawing upon my own spiritual call to ministry. Finally, we examine the generational divide in understanding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, highlighting the shifting perspectives in today's world. Tune in for a rich conversation blending faith, politics, and cultural insights.
The views expressed on Church Potluck are solely those of the participants and do not represent any organization.
Hey, this is Dale McConkie, your host of Church Potluck. We had some episodes last semester that we recorded, but I never edited them and downloaded them for your consumption. So we're changing that now and we're making them available to you. The information might be a little stale, but hopefully it's not spoiled. So go ahead and dig in. All right, everyone talk real quick into the microphone so I can see your voices go up on the monitor.
Speaker 2:I'm talking in the microphone.
Speaker 3:Okay, that's good, how does my voice sound Like?
Speaker 1:Michael Bailey. All right, very, you know, radio-like Aww. All right, so here we go. Welcome everyone to Church Potluck, where we are serving up a smorgasbord of Christian curiosity. I'm your host, dale McConkie, sociology professor and United Methodist pastor. You know there are two keys to a good church potluck Plenty of variety and engaging conversation and, I guess for this episode I might say, just showing up once in a while as well. This is exactly what we try to do here on Church Potluck Sitting down with friends and sharing our ideas on a variety of topics from a variety of academic disciplines and a variety of Christian traditions. And welcome everyone because we are back, yay. Well, my apologies for the extended hiatus last semester. We have dropped two episodes recently, but those were ones that were recorded last semester and I didn't get edited to share, so I hope that you'll listen to them, but I do feel bad about being here. And allow me to explain myself. Michael Christy, do you have out your little tiny?
Speaker 3:Christy, you're excellent I didn't know you had this I know you play the bass.
Speaker 2:I play the bass. This does not sound like a bass.
Speaker 3:No, you're way up on the neck. I guess it would be down on the neck, is that right?
Speaker 1:So viewers feel sad for me. I overextended myself way too much last semester. I had four classes, three preparations, one of them totally new. I didn't even know that I was going to be teaching that until a week or two before the semester began. Oh the woes, the trouble I had. Actually, don't cry for me at all. It was my own doing and my own choice and I actually enjoyed teaching that class. But I don't want to have to take such a long break again. So we are exploring ways to make sure that the podcast stays can I say that properly? Stays sustainable. One of you try to say that a few times fast.
Speaker 2:See if I Stays. Yeah, it's not easy, it is difficult, isn't?
Speaker 1:it. Now your turn. I said it perfectly. All right, Stay sustainable In your mind right, very well, but anyway, all of us or at least most of us are having a great time doing this podcast, and so we committed to keeping it going, so hopefully we won't have those extended hiatuses as we did this past time.
Speaker 3:I just I do want to say that last semester you were busy, as you pointed out, as are you this semester. You were really always a good cheer and I knew that you're busy just because you had no time at all, but that didn't really affect your disposition and I don't know if I approve of that or not. Yeah, that was good.
Speaker 1:Thanks. Thank you very much. We could elaborate there, but we have so many other things to talk about today. Moving on, we've got two guests today and I'm just going to let them introduce themselves. First of all, we have Christy Snyder Dr Christy Snyder.
Speaker 2:Hello, my name is Christy Snyder. I teach in the history department and I've said it before, I'll say it again my faith tradition is Roman.
Speaker 1:Catholic. I thought you said your fifth tradition, what?
Speaker 3:is that first story? That's my story.
Speaker 1:All right, thank you, chrissy, it's good to see you, and next we have Dr Michael Bailey.
Speaker 3:Greetings. Thanks for having me. I think I could probably come up with five faith traditions that I've adhered to at some point. Very quickly, go oh gosh Unitarianism, pentecostalism, christian reform, first Pres, I mean PCA, and then Methodist, united, methodist, no All right, there's a lot of overlap between reform and PCA.
Speaker 1:You Catholics don't bounce around like that right, chrissy.
Speaker 2:I'm pretty straight and narrow. I'm kind of a closet Catholic too.
Speaker 3:They don't accept me, but I love them.
Speaker 1:This is part of church potluck right. Just appreciating the diversity that's out there and each offers kind of a different part of the meal for us to be nourished by, that's pretty dang eloquent for not having that in my notes, All right. So my first question to both of you is are we here to talk about JC or Casey? Oh, Casey's cool with me For those of you who don't know, we're talking to two very big Kansas Chiefs fans, Kansas City Chiefs fans.
Speaker 3:I would say to talk about one is to talk about the other. I don't want to say which one.
Speaker 2:I am actually very worried about this weekend's game against the Ravens.
Speaker 3:We'll need JC.
Speaker 1:All right, maybe we can come back next week and celebrate another upcoming Super Bowl appearance, or we can just wallow in the misery of defeat which you all are not very used to lately. But on to the show. We are actually having a new format today. Usually, when we get together like this, we have four guests, one topic with an expert, and here we've got three guests, including myself, but no experts. We are going to, from time to time, do church potlucks where we don't have one master theme. We're going to have each person come in with just some little ideas and not even necessarily an area that they are experts in. I would say that none of us are experts in the things that we're about to talk about, but just things that we're curious about. It's almost like a real church potluck when you get down and you just start chatting and you go into areas that you're not very familiar with. We're going to do that. And our topic treating Trump like a deity. A pastor mishears God and then finally, solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. All together, all together.
Speaker 3:We'll resolve it here. Let's see when do we go. Listen to the end. What Listen to?
Speaker 1:the very end. That's right. That's where you're going to reveal all there, dr Michael Bailey. That's the goal, all right, so you know what I did not download. I'll have to take all this out. Reason I was doing this was to download a certain thing and it's not there. Oh. I'm sorry. It's not a big deal. It was a little swish sound in between our, in between the oh you know what I do. Have it All right, christy, why don't you get us started on this meal? What would you like to talk about today?
Speaker 2:What I brought in today was a New York Times opinion piece written by Thomas Edsel, and it was titled the Deification of Trump Poses Some Interesting Questions, and what Edsel basically does is he starts off giving some what I think he considers evidence that some of Trump's supporters see him as a kind of savior-like figure. Most recently, I guess, on True Social, there was a video posted called God Made Trump. I watched it. It was a short little video and just this is why God has given us Trump to. You know, save America from bad things, america from bad things. And then he talks about how which of the religious supporters of Trump really do talk in this kind of language of former President Trump saving America? And he pointed primarily to evangelical, especially charismatic, and what is it?
Speaker 2:charismatic and Pentecostal, yeah, and what is it? Charismatic and Pentecostal? Yeah, evangelicals, and not so much that they see him as you know, the messiah, but they see him more as they compare him to King Cyrus, who, as a Catholic, I had never heard of. King Cyrus. I do know now that he's in the bible. He was a ungodly, apparently, man who saved the Jews or released them from Babylon, and so Trump, with all of his problems then, can be like King Cyrus, still doing good work, protecting, in this case, christians from all of their foes, whether that be progressives or socialists or liberals.
Speaker 1:So let me go ahead and start off. Let me start off with just an initial pushback and maybe I'll push back in a few other places on this article. First of all, for this to be a New York Times piece to put in the title the Deification of Trump. There's not a single example in here where you are calling Trump a god, and so I think that is a little not muckraking. What's the word when you over hyperbole to the point of being incorrect in what Pentecostals and charismatics are doing with Trump? And so for some place as prestigious as New York Times that often gets criticized for having a blind eye to the right, I think that this is probably not a good title.
Speaker 2:I would agree that I was looking through it, for you know evidence of this deification and you don't see it. You do see they quote Marjorie Taylor Greene who is, you know, the congressman of our district. Congressperson of our district and she did say that you know, similar to the way that the Romans persecuted Jesus, Trump is being persecuted by the government. But that was like the only real kind of comparison. I think to Jesus.
Speaker 1:And I don't think it's wrong to look for evidence of, you know, thinking of Trump as a savior, but just not deify.
Speaker 2:The savior right.
Speaker 3:Maybe, but okay, I'll just ask you in your pushback to this is your understanding of deification? Does it have to be sort of Christian in nature? There's an omniscient, omnipotent God, but if you think about Roman gods, who were the leaders, I don't think people thought that they created the universe.
Speaker 1:I don't think the Roman Pete, but they did deify them. There was a time when they had to go in and worship the emperor's genius I think is what it was referred to which was his divineness. There was something distinctly different about the emperor compared to the rest of humanity.
Speaker 3:And you would suggest that Trump followers, or a portion of them, are not doing that already, that they don't see Donald Trump as somehow different in kind than, say, other leaders and other people. I think that's just a given. That's the case nowadays. Other leaders and other people. I think that's just a given. That's the case nowadays. So, whether I mean no, no one in the Christian faith is going to say that he was there at the beginning, you know, before day one.
Speaker 1:But the idea that he has a special role, but that's an anointing and everybody and especially Charismatics and Pentecostals will use that term very loosely for tons of people. So I do think that this person probably has a bit of a blind eye to the way Pentecostals and Charismatics talk. So, for example and we'll get you back to this article they said that they often pray by laying hands on Donald Trump as a way of giving him a special kind of anointing. I lay hands on folks when I pray sometimes and I would be surprised if a church service in Pentecostalism or charismatic traditions that there isn't a worship service that goes by where someone's not laying hands on someone else to pray for them. So it is yes, you're important, yes, you're special, yes, we are commissioning you for something or we're trusting you. But to toss around these terms, as this author did, I think, does nothing more than to show the right. Look at how much you're misunderstood and look how much they're going to take and twist your terms into saying things that you do not mean.
Speaker 3:It might be that a careful parsing here of his language to suggest that he's not the author is not as steeped in theology as you would have him, but I think the bigger picture is that he's getting at a phenomenon that needs to be discussed. That is interesting and arresting and, I think, unsettling, and there does seem to be some sense that this man is perceived as chosen and has qualities that others don't have. For example, even Marjorie Taylor Greene said I will follow him, no matter what. I mean. That sounds who do you? I mean, yes, you can follow rulers right and follow leaders, but that sounds very much like what someone might say about Jesus is following Jesus.
Speaker 3:I think that he's getting at something that is genuine and real and about their laying of hands. I actually took that particular section to talk about the fervor that people have about him with religion that he himself actually doesn't share. So I thought it was more talking about the oddity that this guy, who is pretty secular, doesn't know the Bible very well Donald Trump doesn't seem to be a participant in a church does have these people who surround him and then involve them in their own religion. That's what I thought it was talking about, not to say that there's something wild or unique or strange about laying on of hands.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I would say that they are definitely treating him as a charismatic leader who is worthy of devotion and following in a way that we haven't seen in previous presidents, but I do think that you weaken your argument when you use some of the terminology that he was. So that's my point. Thank you very much, chrissy. Let's go on to our next topic.
Speaker 2:So I was going to. I just wanted to add to that that this kind of sent me down a maybe it's a rabbit hole, but there was an earlier New York Times article by Ruth Graham where it was called Trump is Connecting with a Different Type of Evangelical Voter. That was published in January 8th. And these are like people who say that they are evangelical right, they're self-claimed evangelicals, but they have no church, right, they don't go to which you think of evangelical as the most church-going. And so these are people who probably maybe because they are populist, that you know they have embraced evangelicalism, seeing in that something that gives them, I don't know some sort of maybe link to the past that otherwise they don't have. And I think those are the ones who might really be deifying Trump. Perhaps I think those are the ones who might really be deifying Trump, perhaps so not those who really, you know, kind of understand more of the tradition.
Speaker 3:The article did point out that the creators of the you know God said Trump video that in particular, the leader of that group calls himself a Christian, calls himself, does not belong to a church and claims no real knowledge of the Bibles. But increasingly, that is just who we are as a country. So to hold to it. By the way, I mean, it's gonna be the editor who comes up with the name of this title. It's not gonna be the author of the piece itself. I don't know what the author would have suggested the name should be, so maybe it was a blunder on the editor's point to use that particular word. That's a good point actually.
Speaker 1:But I think that the overall thrust here is that something different and odd is happening. That, I think, is very troubling. It should be troubling for Christians. Yes, if you haven't seen the very short video God sent is it God not? God sent Trump? God made Trump. God made Trump. It really is striking and there's no doubt that there's a sense of anointing. There's no doubt that there's a sense of that and in many other respects that God has. This is a special moment that God has sent a special person to set things right, and so I totally agree with that. And if you haven't seen the video, it really is depending on your attitude toward Trump just striking.
Speaker 2:either way, and I did think that it was very I mean, it was kind of funny because they talk about you know, trump was not notorious for his long work days, but they talk about by Tuesday he's put in his 40-hour work week and then he adds another 72 hours to it. To you know, make sure to get all his good work done during the week, which I thought was funny. But all right, my final comment here was to link this back to the past, so I'm going to throw this out there to you guys. Is Trump's you know kind of use of religion any different than William Jenning Bryan, the Democratic candidate who gave the Cross of Gold speech in 1896? Is it? Is his populism? Is his use of religion different than what Bryant was doing way back when and you may not know much about?
Speaker 1:I will totally confess that my knowledge of presidential speeches does not go back to 1896.
Speaker 3:Sorry, cross of gold type of speech. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So let me I'll just read you. This is an excerpt from the cross of gold speech. It says if they dare to come out in the open field and defend the gold standard as a good thing, we shall fight them to the utmost. Having behind us the producing masses of the nation and the world, having behind us the commercial interest and the laboring interest of all the tolling masses, we shall answer the demands for the gold standard by saying to them you shall not press down on the brow of labor a crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.
Speaker 1:A few analogies in there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that was kind of what made me think about this, I mean my understanding of Brian is that he was himself profoundly evangelical. He really did believe, he became a Presbyterian.
Speaker 3:And I believe that he was defending the six-day creation in the Scopes Monkey Trial and I think one difference is he was himself a believer. I find that language is kind of icky and over the top and sort of an equation of the experiences we're having here with God's will, which I just never have that kind of confidence that you can with great specificity know what God would have us do on a public policy.
Speaker 1:Just wait for my article.
Speaker 3:Okay, yeah, I mean I think he might be more over the top than Trump personally, but less cynical somehow.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so he actually believes what he is saying.
Speaker 3:That's the sense I have of him.
Speaker 1:Here's another point I would make is, if you listen to the Jennings quotes, it's about the religious language is directed toward the policies. It's not the person per se. He's not holding himself or, as far as I know, his followers. Maybe they are, but the people who were agreeing with him were not using that language about him.
Speaker 3:He was a very spellbinding speaker and he did end that speech with that cross of gold imagery, with his hands extended like he was on a cross.
Speaker 2:And just the whole fact like I'm not fighting for me, I am fighting for you. I think that also resonates yeah.
Speaker 1:And as soon as you read that first line and he's talking about, we will fight them, at least in this day and age, I do think I wish both parties, everybody, would hold back on the warfare and the violent imagery in their speeches.
Speaker 3:But I'm sure that's American populist and Trump is a populist, and populism tends to be ranks higher in terms of willingness to use non-orthodox violent means to get what you want, because they believe that the system is corrupted. So going through the ordinary channels of process is not always going to work.
Speaker 1:Great, thank you very much. All right, so I want to talk about my article now, and I this article is about a Colorado-based online pastor, and so hold on to that online thought for a second. I want to talk about this, and this person's name is Eli Regaladot. Sorry, let me just try that again and I'll edit it out, eli.
Speaker 2:Regalado.
Speaker 1:Regalado, regalado, regalado, regalado this person's name is Eli Regalado and his wife, caitlin, and they have been I don't know if it's been formally arrested, but they have been given notice that there's been papers filed against them in the Colorado courts for trying to sell cryptocurrency that is essentially worthless. But their motive for selling the cryptocurrency was because God told him to that he was going to sell cryptocurrency to his congregation, and $3.2 million of cryptocurrency has been sold supposedly. And when he was told that he was committing fraud by this currency that he knew was essentially worthless, his explanation was he thinks that he may have misheard God and that God had told him. He told his congregation that God had told him to do this, to go into this, that God was going to provide for his ministry this way and that maybe he has now misheard God.
Speaker 1:And I'm not so much interested in the details of this particular case as I am kind of the implications of some of the things that came out of this, and the first one is the source of religious authority.
Speaker 1:I'll just start there with you all. This is an online pastor and I'm sure there are amazing people who say amazing things very devout, and I know Eli, I'm not going to try to say his name again, I apologize, but might be a very sincere, devout person. But where does his source of authority to be a pastor? Where does his source of authority come from? And from what I can tell, it comes from his own desire to be an online pastor and, from what I can tell, it comes from his own desire to be an online pastor. And I think about this a lot, and I talk about this a lot in my classes, about where does the authority come in order to lead people as a pastor. And just with that little bit, you all coming—Michael coming from five traditions, christy coming from a very long one. What would you say to that question?
Speaker 2:So it's obviously the pope right. The pope grants you the authority to—no, but I mean, there does seem to be like you know, I don't know, and that would be traditional authority.
Speaker 1:Yeah right.
Speaker 2:It comes down from. You go through training and you learn the literature of the Bible, you learn how to minister to people and, yeah, there are a series of steps you take, although I know that is not every tradition.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean something about the Catholic Church is getting it right. Apostolic succession has been working for 2,000 years. How would you?
Speaker 1:describe this Actually two ways. I've been taught apostolic succession. How would you describe that?
Speaker 3:for our listeners. My understanding, which could be incorrect, is that that was passed on to other other leaders who essentially got the receive the imprimatur from that, first from peter and then from his followers moving on down. I expressed that terribly, but I think I I was following it, so I think so. I think his idea is that authority is sort of transferred from one generation to another.
Speaker 1:So every pastor now or every priest in the Catholic Church can trace back their ordination to the previous generation, to the previous generation. There's like a family tree that goes all the way back to Jesus through Peter, right, and so that's the apostolic succession when it comes from by position and some people, and that tends to be the one that's supported by Catholics, high church traditions, catholics and Episcopalians and, I believe, lutherans as well. I could be wrong about that, but lower church traditions emphasize apostolic Callings by calling, but also by doctrine, that this person was true to the doctrine and was passed on and there was a group of people who recognized that this person was being true to the doctrine and true to the doctrine and trace it back that way. But it is interesting, I do think, in this day and age. Let me take a step back. And so that tradition would very much be in line with.
Speaker 1:You know, max Weber said there's basically three ways that we establish authority, right, so it can be through traditional means, that this is the way we've always done it and so we do it. But you also mentioned that Catholic Church also very much emphasizes kind of rational training, right, that reason is very important and there's a process by which you are identified as someone who's learned it enough, who is called enough, and you have that process. It's kind of more of a rational, often referred to as rational legal process. And then the third way is just charisma, right, and people ask Jesus by whose authority are you doing this? He says my father's. It's come straight from there.
Speaker 1:I didn't study under a rabbi. And today, especially in modern day society, if you want to refer to yourself as a pastor and develop a three-year DC or I've said that, all wrong, but anyway, if you set up a nonprofit and go online and say you're a pastor, you can be a pastor, kind of with all the legal recognition as the Catholic Church does, massive global church and this one guy saying I'm a pastor. So, to find ways to trust, how do you trust right, and how do you determine whether somebody has the authority to make these kinds of decisions? I find that to be an interesting question in this day and age where we increasingly rely on charismatic authority that the people that we trust are— In the realm of religion right.
Speaker 1:Realm of religion and everywhere else too right.
Speaker 3:Because what?
Speaker 1:Because expertise is now in question, because I would have guessed that rationalization is still pretty important, but— Well see, I'd say we've gone post-rational now or post-modern, in which influencers right who was I just talking to that said that somebody was asking if Taylor Swift could come and visit a church because then church attendance would skyrocket like Super Bowl viewership I mean not Super Bowl, nfl viewership has gone up. Just think about all the influencers say, hey, look at this, my product, and even in presidential elections.
Speaker 3:You know it's much less about rational argumentation now, as it is persona and Kind of connected to them being part of a post-truth world, it would seem, yeah, where you don't have special authority on the claim of your expertise or your position or your voice. Right, I mean the Catholic Church definitely correct me if I'm wrong they own the conferring of that position in whole. I don't know the answer to this. I think that's a really tried and true method. I think if someone claims to have special authority, you're really just kind of relying on signs at this point. And I think if someone can hold up a staff and part a sea, I'm going to follow them. It's really true. Or they can strike a rock, and water flows out. I was like, yeah, okay, you've got something you know that's really important. Short of that, then, I think that an attitude of skepticism is not unwarranted. That's my own opinion.
Speaker 2:So I just recently watched the. There's a mini series on David Koresh in the Waco siege.
Speaker 2:That's a great example, he's just, yeah, very kind of, you know, starts off as this guy who's dyslexic, has trouble reading, learns the Bible really well though, and can quote it, and it's just a charismatic leader and, you know, appealed to the people in this community and who I really do believe. They, you know, I think they really believe that he had been given a calling. Even more than that, since, I think, towards the end, he was also believing that he was maybe the second coming.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and many of these streaming services. That was a great example. Many of these streaming services are just it's not at the same level as true crime, but it is just these cults that arise and many of them are secular. Many are not Christian or not really any particular religious tradition, but just they do deify their leaders sometimes, and it really is quite striking and sometimes it's very well-educated, very knowledgeable people just seeking something different than what life is offering them and willing to follow this person to very extreme measures you know, not quite Jonestown measures, but very much. This is something that's fascinating me is that how are people trusting religious authority these days? But we can also ask it of other areas, not just religious.
Speaker 3:I mean your whole example here opens up the question of, it seems to me, how a sort of self-critical, self-scrutinizing person should determine whether they have heard the voice of God or whether I mean. What kind of test should you? How do you discern that? I don't know, dude that's my next question.
Speaker 1:That's exactly where I was taking it.
Speaker 3:You took us there. I don't have an answer, Since you were going to pose the question.
Speaker 1:I mean no, you got to flip. I pose the question you provide the answers to it Love early yeah.
Speaker 1:This is something that Dr Jeffrey Lickey and I are going to explore in an episode coming up that he and I both have had these religious experiences. His was not necessarily God speaking to him, but it was a profound religious experience that he had. And I became a chaplain at Berry College, and specifically chaplain at Berry Berry College, from what I consider to be a calling. It was a one-word calling prepare, but it really felt this was from God, and I'll just see where this goes and I'll go into much more detail another time. But I thought my training was going to take five or six years because it was more of a rational line. And five or six weeks later I was asked to serve as chaplain here at Berry College and so I just but I still ask myself how do I know for sure? How did other people affirm that? Mostly because I didn't tell them that God spoke to me out in the woods.
Speaker 1:But it really is a fascinating question to me how do you know when God speaks right? One of my go-to lines in my sermons when I talk about God speaking to us is the line where it's not in the fire, it's not in the earthquakes, it's in the gentle whispers sometimes. But I also know friends who are more along the Pentecostal charismatic where God will speak to them three, four, five times before they brush their teeth in the morning that they just feel like there's an ongoing conversation between them and God, them and God, whereas I tend to think you know, in fact, that one word that I will say was I felt like God was talking to me was really the only time that I felt this kind of certainty to really change my life based on it. So I think it's a difficult question to ask, especially in an era where we have so many different truth claims or maybe that's always been the case.
Speaker 2:I think it's one thing too to believe it yourself, right To feel like yourself that you've been touched or been, yeah, that God has talked to you. But to hear somebody say they've been touched, you know that's got that is also different. It's not that I don't believe you, I believe you believe it, but yeah if I didn't know you. Why would I trust you right?
Speaker 1:That's a stinging line. I, if I didn't know you, why would I trust you? Right? That's a stinging line. I believe that you believe it, and I do get some cynicism hearing about this story that we started off with, because he did use a significant amount of the money for a remodeling of his house that he said needed to be done by God's will. But so people are upset and doubting whether he actually heard God and then misheard, or even misheard God.
Speaker 3:I mean it seems like scrutiny and determining, tracking as things go. I mean I'm going to just back up and say to be completely, let's say, you're a person of faith, and to be completely dismissive of any time you think that you hear the word of God seems to me not to be very faithful. I mean, it seems like there should be some sort of you, have some sort of orientation towards being receptive to the Word of God when you think you hear it. But you should also. That would strike me is try to inspect the your own motives and ask yourself is this asking me to do something that I would know otherwise to be immoral or wicked or wrong? How is this affecting other people where I have actual obligations? I took a vow to my wife before God. That certainly has some sort of ongoing weight, and so if this is calling me to do something that would hurt her, I probably would have to be more dubious.
Speaker 1:Yeah One of the things I would add to that is I kind of teased that I didn't tell people. I did tell people. I just didn't immediately open up the conversation with President Kali with oh God spoke to me and said I should be, you know and present it that way. But there should be, I think and I got this from the church I studied for my dissertation just this affirmation that if you feel like God has spoken to you, that there should be fellow believers that are getting that same kind of sense of calling rather than it being. God rarely works totally solo and one person hears it and nobody else has that same sense of calling.
Speaker 3:You may not remember this about that story, but you told me right away or very soon and I was super excited for you and took it very seriously. I'm not saying that I don't think I was, did not have much of memory for you, but I remember the not the occasion when it happened for you on the day but you told me pretty quickly thereafter and I had no doubt about your sincerity as well as the possibility this could be and also it just seemed. It seemed like an exciting new possibility and direction and good for the college as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you very much. We'll end on that nice high note, dr Bailey. We have saved the easiest for last. Nice little resolution here.
Speaker 3:I've learned not to say aloud what the title of this article was, because I don't want to. No, actually I don't even know what the title. I saw a poll from this last week from the Economist-UGov Institute I guess Economistism Magazine in Britain just dozens and dozens of different topics, but what caught my eye was the difference of opinions, the gap between young people and old people in their own posture towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And so just some data. I just. They have the entire spectrum of ages, but I'm just going to take the youngest grouping and the oldest and for the simple question of an Israeli-Palestinian conflict, are your sympathies more with Israel or the Palestinians? For 18 to 29-year-olds it was not quite two to one in favor of Palestinians. About a third of the people said that it was about equal. But about 30% of young people favored Palestinians and 18% were more sympathetic towards Israel. For those who are 65 and older, it was a dramatic difference. Only 8% of those who are 65 or older are more sympathetic towards the Palestinians and 56% claim that they're more sympathetic with Israel. That is a giant gap. That sort of is consistent with the size of gap that you have with partisanship and it probably is linked to some extent with partisanship. It's probably linked with other of the sort of famous variables that affect how we feel. So it's sort of in alignment with who's more sympathetic to Israel in general Republicans and males and conservatives, people who live in rural areas, all of those sort of reinforce one another. But I again was really surprised by the difference in from ages.
Speaker 3:And then a similar question, sort of probing a certain thing. Was the question an empirical question with obviously a lot of judgment behind it, which is is there a genocide going on in Palestine, presumably the Gaza Strip, and among young people? By a ratio of two to one they said yes. So 49% of 18 to 29 year olds said yes and 24% said no. There was not a genocide. But for older folks, 65 and older, it was about two and a half times more likely to say no 52% thought there's not a genocide taking place and about 21% said yes.
Speaker 3:So that's what I wanted to sort of bring to the table, an idea that probably is not going to go very far in this. How do we account for this? For one thing, probably that variable is mingled with the other ones I mentioned. It's mingled probably with income and it's probably mingled with party and partisanship as well, but even within the Democratic Party. I don't have the data right in front of me, but I read that even with the Democratic Party there is a huge division in terms of attitude towards Israel and Palestine, and it really seems to turn on so even when you account for party affiliation.
Speaker 1:you see, that's as we can see relationship continue with age.
Speaker 3:It would seem to be the case just by looking at within the Democratic Party itself. How does one account for this? And I haven't really read a serious account for this. I've heard anecdotally people talk about how young people essentially take. Their moral posture or their moral compass is oriented by, essentially, the ethic of victimhood, and it's understood that Gaza City, effectively being seen as a kind of open air prison for a number of years and in some degree or another under occupation since the 40s, as the Palestinians are victims and therefore essentially there's a lot more sympathy for the response of October 7th and less empathy for Israel. So that's, I think, a common kind of narrative that's being thrown out there.
Speaker 1:But what I and I don't mean to. This might be the right and wrong term, but is that kind of a recency bias? Because you know you go back a few more decades and you have some other issues with Israel. And is it just that when you've been talking like this, I've been wondering does our younger generation really not understand or empathize with the Holocaust? Is it such a distant memory? And maybe you as a history professor might know from the way people respond.
Speaker 2:I know you don't teach World War II warfare very often, but yeah, and I mean I do talk a little bit in when I teach American diplomacy about the United States role in support of the creation of Israel, but yeah, it's very brief. I do think students do not know a lot about that whole period of time and they do see I think Mike is right the Palestinians as the victims of that arrangement and yeah, so I think that adds to it as well.
Speaker 1:Like 24,000 to a little over a thousand. You can see where especially someone who is young, just probably becoming more knowledgeable about world affairs would see this and just be easy to say this is wrong.
Speaker 3:Yeah, for sure. I mean in my alternative theory to the idea of just for lack of a better word but wokeness, of just being understanding right and wrong in terms of who has been victimized, is exactly what you said, but both of you said. I saw another article in the last week from the Washington Post suggesting that there are probably 240,000 or so survivors from the Holocaust. All of them would have been the time and probably I think the number was 30,000 to 40,000 are in the United States and so there are not many survivors who can tell kind of a living story or an account of what that was and bring home for lots of people what that meant. You know, in my childhood I grew up in Kansas City and so I learned basketball and I took swim lessons and I went to preschool at the Jewish Community Center, and the Jewish Community Center of Kansas City was really an important cultural haven for lots of Eastern Europeans who were displaced, who came to the United States after World War II and I was born, you know, just 22 years after the end of World War II.
Speaker 3:It was very relevant, that story, the movies and just the lives of people, and Lincoln in one of his addresses talks about the challenges of governing in his young man's lyceum's address he was a young man himself when he gave this but he talks about the challenges of governing the United States as the founders die off and not just the founders, but as those who fought in the war died off, and he talks about how the living history that's his own expression the living history that populated the homes who could talk about the war and would bear the scars of those battles brought home the sacrifice.
Speaker 3:And he said as that goes away, we're going to be just much more caught up in our self-interest and our own story and I'm wondering whether young people don't have that keenly felt, just kind of acute sense of the horror of what happened to people of Jewish faith in Europe and therefore the warrant for Israel is supposed to be a safe place, and how terrifying that incursion was. I mean so I just that's. What I'm wondering is whether there is this, that lack of history, that might account for this lack of sympathy for Israel at that time.
Speaker 2:And I do think that, especially like among our students, those who are kind of pro-Palestinian and very much kind of seeing their pain, I don't think they would see themselves as anti-Semitic right. I think they would see themselves as being anti-Israel, that the government is doing something wrong, but that the Jewish people, yeah, they're cool and we're okay with the Jewish people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, that's just a sense I have. It's obvious that in some of the protests, that some of the terminology that has been used by protesters definitely did sound like it was calling for the extermination of Jews and things like that. But I would say, at least from students at Berry, I haven't, although I do think they it's very much they lean more towards that. The Palestinians are the ones who are being victimized in this situation.
Speaker 3:I mean, I think that's just really good insight, because I think one of the criticisms that young people have of Israel I think it's a sound criticism is there might be a conflation of Hamas with the people of Gaza entirely. So you have to keep a sharp distinction between the decision makers who are leading this and the ordinary citizens who are victims of it. Yeah, to make a distinction between, I think it's a tricky one, to make a distinction between Israel and Jews, and I would feel very uncomfortable myself making that it's understandable analytically.
Speaker 1:So Am I a coward to say that I would be very nervous to be teaching at some of these elite colleges where the fervor over this conflict is so much stronger than it is here at Berry College? I feel like I would be so nervous to try to broach this subject in any way.
Speaker 3:It's possible I mean, I've been really it's possible that I'm a coward?
Speaker 3:No, it's possible that there's a reason more to be nervous. I've been really surprised at the response of some of the more elite Ivy schools, of just the anger that's boiled up. I don't know, maybe that puts me out of touch. I'm sure that it does. Yeah, in a way that I mean I teach American politics and that does require you have to be kind of savvy to, I think, american politics and that does require you have to be kind of savvy to, I think, navigate that in a way, and that's so much at Barry, but you do but disrupted classrooms and campuses in the way that this topic has. It's really touched the heartstrings of lots of young people, but in ways that in some ways are admirable. But I think in some ways it may be short-sighted or at least differently sighted than the way I view it.
Speaker 1:Do any of us really know enough to be able to have a strong opinion one way or another?
Speaker 3:I think we have lots of strong opinions. I think they're contradictory, though, and to know how to find a clear path out of the mess is beyond me, but I mean, for me, that initial incursion was really one of the most awful things that I have read about in my 56 years. My initial incursion was On October 7th, when Hamas came in and murdered people and seemed to seek out civilians specifically, individually in their house and called them out and all the rest of it. It was mass murder at an individual level. That wasn't just sort of in quotations, collateral damage of dropping a bomb and not really caring about the distinction between leaders and civilians. This was seeking out individuals to kill families and young people. I really was just shocked by you have to go back to almost like Rwanda, on an obviously smaller scale, but I think yeah, I mean that doesn't preclude someone saying killing 25,000 people, 70% of which are women and children, is also terrible. I mean. I think you can hold those in your mind simultaneously.
Speaker 1:That makes sense to me.
Speaker 3:And I think you can be very troubled by Hamas. I think that it's not an indicator of the entire Palestinian people. It's also troublesome that Hamas was elected in whatever 2005 or 2006. So I don't know, I mean, I just think it's yeah.
Speaker 2:I was just going to say yeah, but you know what, if we still had to have our same leaders from 2005 and 2006 and we weren't allowed to have another election until? I mean, it is so much more complicated, I think, than most of our students realize.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think that's right yeah.
Speaker 2:Or yeah, and I also think Kelsey Rice, who is in the history department here and teaches.
Speaker 1:Christy Snyder, speaking for Kelsey Rice.
Speaker 2:I went to you know they did a panel discussion on this and she told students, you know, don't get your news from social media. And I do wonder if that is part of why young people feel the way they do is just kind of where they get their news from.
Speaker 3:It's hugely important. There was a time back in the 60s and 70s where young people actually tested better for political knowledge than older people. There just wasn't that same age gap. But now young people know so much more about older people, about technology and certain kinds of entertainment business, but when it comes to the political world, it's almost impossible to underestimate how little they know, he said.
Speaker 2:I am not going to second that, but you could be right, yeah.
Speaker 1:My last question at least this is called church potluck and we haven't talked too much. Is there a religious angle here that needs exploring, and particularly, is there a Christian perspective, which the answer is no, but is there. How does religion fit into all of this, do you think?
Speaker 3:And to the Israeli-Palestinian.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean evangelical conservatives, fundamentalist conservatives, just conservative Christians in general, have been historically Israel's great supporters. Yeah, we have bulletin boards around the community here in Rome that support Israel, and presumably by conservative religious groups.
Speaker 3:And you know, younger people are increasingly unaffiliated, as we've talked about before, and something like 40% of that very group that was polled right essentially are not affiliated with religions. There's no reason, from an unaffiliated perspective, to think of Israel as special, unique chosen. It's just a group of people who seem, in their opinion, to be oppressors. I don't know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a good point. And so, with there being such a clear tipping of non-religiosity, especially among the young, which I think I'm just repeating what you said I think that's a possible connection for why young people more than older people. Great, all right, we will end it there. So, unless I missed anything, was there anything that we needed to be talking about, anything we didn't catch?
Speaker 3:Okay, trump is God, no sorry.
Speaker 1:I'll tell you what. Someone give me the keys to the game on Sunday.
Speaker 2:Our offense. We need our receivers to catch the ball the way they did last week. I'd say that's key one.
Speaker 3:Our offensive line has to be able to hold that defensive line, which they are like a tidal wave. It's terrifying.
Speaker 1:They seem mighty good, the Baltimore Ravens.
Speaker 2:And I think, third, we need our defense to play their best and not like they did last week.
Speaker 3:I think if they win that game they have a decent chance in the Super Bowl, but I think they may be blown out. We'll see.
Speaker 1:I mean, do you think Baltimore is the prohibited favorite all the way through? Seem to be All right. I want to thank our guests, christy Snyder and Michael Bailey. Thank you so much. I've enjoyed the conversation. I hope you have as well, and the same thing for all of you out there. I want to thank our audience for sitting around the table with us today. I hope that we have provided you with some food for thought and something to chew on, and we probably will have a little conversation after this. So if you want to tune in for some leftovers, we will do that, as we were doing last semester. And just again, thank you so much. This is Church Potluck and also, actually I'm going to turn this down for just a quick question, because my guests were enjoying the music of this. But I want to remind you that we are going to do a little side project podcast called here. I'm just going to tell you what it's called. Right here, michael Bailey is doing a little orchestra leadership there.
Speaker 4:We're actually the air drums Jesus Christ movie star. Sure, do we believe what movies say?
Speaker 1:you are Jesus Christ movie star. We're going to be talking about Jesus movies and eventually we'll talk about Christian themed movies and such. But first of all, just a little project I'm doing in terms of doing over the past hundred years how has Jesus been represented in film and the different personalities and kick that off next week. Definitely we'll be talking with John Huggins and Gabriel Roes I hope I'm pronouncing your new name correctly, Gabriel and just I hope that you will listen to that. We'll post a few of those on Church Potluck, but eventually we'll give it its own little place to go to if you're interested in those. But thank you so much, and last time this has been Church Potluck. All right, We'll bring it right back down. Her voice is so clear, yeah, it is so pure. I'm going to send her a message tonight and tell you just how much I'm really fond of her.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I was so lucky, so fortunate, like I said, because I was just, you know okay.
Speaker 3:And also you can hear just a touch of humor in her voice. I mean, you can hear a little bit of the play.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 3:I don't know, that's fun. I just hadn't thought about the pull and all these implications as not touching upon religion, but it didn't have a specifically Christian perspective. No, it was good. You know, I don't know.
Speaker 2:Just hadn't thought about it, that I mean there have been some religious leaders who've come out and I mean I believe the popes come out and said you know, we need to stop the violence.
Speaker 1:And other religious leaders in the evangelical communities and we need to know and we need to support.
Speaker 2:Israel.
Speaker 1:It has definitely become a rallying cry.
Speaker 3:It's just beyond awful the whole thing. I mean when we sort of open our imagination or moral imagination to think that those really are thousands of children. I totally believe and maybe this is not the place to say it I do think Israel has a right to defend itself. This is not the place to say it. I do think Israel has a right to defend itself, but the awfulness of the way they're perceiving that is just so disheartening. It's all just sickening really in a way.
Speaker 1:My question would be without really knowing the answer, because I do think things are so complex and I have not delved into it enough but is Israel's response proportional to what happened, or do they need to go to this extent to make sure it doesn't happen again? Like I said, I don't know the answers, but I'd be curious to talk to an Old Testament scholar, because I have heard multiple times. You know the adage an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth was meant as a limit of violence, not, as you know, if they get you, you get them back. It's if they do this. You may do no more than what they have done.
Speaker 3:The United States has never followed that, ever remotely, anything like that, I think it's in 2 Corinthians.
Speaker 2:So did you both watch the video? God Made Trump. Yes, yes, yes, I thought technically it was very well done.
Speaker 1:It achieved its purpose. Yes, you know I try to be careful because I want people who are conservative to watch this and not think that we are, but any time you treat someone with that, you know I'm about to go against my main point. It felt like they were deifying him right. There is this, you know, made for a very special purpose, for a very special time, and this is the man Made for a very special purpose, for a very special time, and this is the man. And God was just honed in on this from the beginnings of creation to know that this is the man for the time. But it was very powerful, it was very well done.
Speaker 2:I also thought have you seen the photo or I guess it's an image picture of Jesus sitting next to Trump in the courtroom.
Speaker 1:I don't think I've seen that picture, but again, I don't want to belabor the point, but I am. I see tons of pictures like that right that Jesus is right next to you, jesus is holding you up in a difficult time. That picture, that image, is not unique to Trump.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it made me think of like the footprints in the sand analogy. Although I did wonder would it be Jesus carrying Trump, or would Trump carry Jesus through the sand?
Speaker 1:I wish I had listened to the video clip from the quote where Trump was saying he wasn't Jesus. Right, oh yeah, that I'm not Jesus.
Speaker 2:People are saying I'm I'm not as famous. Yeah, I'm not as famous. Oh, I'm not as famous. Yeah, I'm not the most famous.
Speaker 1:That reminded me of the Beatles right that there was a big uproar when the Beatles said that they are as well. No, they didn't say they were better. They didn't say that they were, but they said that we are better known, More popular.
Speaker 3:More popular.
Speaker 1:Okay, there you go. More popular than Jesus Christ, yeah, so if you had to pick one person in this room that was going to remember the exact statement Michael Bayley yeah. I used to be a big Beatles guy. I just way tapered off.
Speaker 3:Not big enough. Nope, nope.
Speaker 2:Definitely not now, Not nearly big enough yeah not now, so cool. So have you ever you don't tape your services and YouTube them, or?
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:Did you during the?
Speaker 1:pandemic. During the pandemic I did it for a little bit During the pandemic. It's only been like the last six months, maybe a year now, that we've had reliable Wi-Fi out there. The only Wi-Fi that they had out there was very slow, very terrible for streaming. We have since, thanks to Elon Musk, we now have Starlink and we have very good streaming services, but so far hasn't affected. We're not getting rings in the middle of the service or anything like that. It hasn't changed too much. But when I first went out there 10 years ago it was just amazing watching these kids just outside playing around throwing footballs and nobody had their head down in their 10 years ago.
Speaker 3:Where did you go?
Speaker 1:Mount Tabor.
Speaker 3:Okay, was that 10 years ago?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've been there for a little over 10 years now. Yeah it's hard to believe I've now been the pastor at Mount Tabor longer than I was the chaplain at Berry College.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I thought about that the other day.
Speaker 3:There is a little bit I think there was when you were no longer a chaplain. There's a little bit of a chaplain emeritus type of feeling to it, for a while, I think, for people who knew you that way and relied on you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but I'm also very glad, you know John Huggins, you know, stepped up and took it as his own, and then you know Aaron and Gabrielle. I'm glad I don't get the sense that when people are talking to me every now and then they'll, you know, talk to me a little bit like a chaplain, but not like. I'm just glad that the way that, I think it was a very good transition and I think we have a very good chaplain staff now that I just rave about all the time. But to very quickly go back to your question, even if I would have had the, it would have made sense for me to record during the pandemic.
Speaker 1:I may have during the pandemic, but when I do my sermons I want to be preaching to my congregation and if I'm knowing that it's going to be heard potentially anywhere, I can't give certain examples, I can't talk to what they're particular, or at least be worried. How will that come over to others? So it's not like I'm trying to hide what I'm saying or anything, but it would lose. What I'm hoping to do is personally be preaching to the congregation. So I do a podcast instead because I think I'm that important.
Speaker 2:I need to be heard. That's right.
Speaker 1:That's now with my sermon.
Speaker 3:Across the globe.
Speaker 2:Yes, I was going to take it in a different direction. This is something totally different, but you notice that when Michael was asking you know why do young people think differently about this issue than older people? Nothing that we're teaching them, right? Nothing that they're learning in college, necessarily. Yeah, I just do not think that's the influence here.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:For some you know you'll hear them, I'm always. I find it cool whenever I bring something up in class and they say, oh, dr Snyder said this, you know, in a way that you can tell that they have really latched on to some insight that they had gotten. Never, bailey, no, actually a lot.
Speaker 1:Bailey no, actually a lot, bailey, yeah, yeah, the one thing I've said this before, but this fits the theme of the podcast that when I taught theology as the chaplain here at Berry College, I made an off-sided joke in class sometimes about nobody who believes in predestination, believes that they are part of the retrobate, part of the condemned. And then one time I said that in class and someone said in a very loud voice Dr Bailey thinks so.
Speaker 2:I must be a truth guy, you know.
Speaker 3:Just telling you what I feel.
Speaker 1:I was just trying to imagine what that class was like.
Speaker 3:Oh, not to say we have to belabor that, but I do remember believing in hell before I believed in heaven, and so there was a little bit of the fear of the hellfire that even pushed me in that direction, back in high school, way back.
Speaker 1:We need to talk about that sometime, but not right now. I think we'll go ahead and wrap up the conversation for today, but thank you all. That was a lot of fun.
Speaker 2:Thanks, Bill.