Scandalous Witness: Christians Reckoning with History and Values / Lee C. Camp
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureShow Notes
Everything is “maxxed” right now, and the news cycle in particular seems to be historymaxxing, insisting that things have never been worse than they are now. And the threats are real, from AI and global warming to election integrity—foreign affairs gone wrong, and violence abroad, in our homes, and in our schools. But the news maxxes us on fear, and so do politicians and corporations, because they want us to do something. If theologian Lee C. Camp is right, history was already maxed at the incarnation, and it came through a subversive way of life: humble, compassionate, at times angry, but radical and scandalous all the same. Camp, author of *Scandalous Witness: A Little Political Manifesto for Christians* and founder and host of the nationally syndicated podcast and radio show No Small Endeavor, argues that the idolatry of the nation state, and even the effort to legislate Christian morality and values into a political movement, is a subversion of Christianity.
“I think people will better understand Christianity. They stop thinking about it as a religion and think of it more as an interpretation of human history.”
In this episode with Evan Rosa, Camp revisits the newly released edition of the book, with a new preface, and makes the case that stories and history, far more than rational argument, are what change how we see the world. Together they discuss what it means to be formed by history and by story, the early twentieth-century Protestant roots of Christian nationalism, Christian values as a parody of Christianity, and the difference between bearing witness and wielding power. They also take up the gravedigger dilemma, the irony of fearful people bringing about the very decline they dread, and what it means to be a neighbor across ideological difference, with stops along the way at a firebombed bus in Camp's native Alabama, a row of Confederate gravestones in his hometown cemetery, and Eboo Patel's account of rival fire departments in Mostar.
Episode Highlights
- "as conservatives increasingly get swept up into the American political moment, there's this new kind of idolatry, I think, of the nation state." - "I generally find the whole Christian values movement destructive to Christianity … when you talk about you're wanting to prioritize certain so-called values and then by hook or by crook, you do whatever you need to to try to get those propagated. You've subverted Christianity." - "I think people will better understand Christianity. They stop thinking about it as a religion and think of it more as an interpretation of human history." - "we believe that death has been overcome by life. That hostility has been overcome by love. That the way even of love of enemies has trounced upon all of the handmaidens of death." - "those who are insisting, no, we wanna bring Christianity back to the public square. By and large may be doing much, much more damage than the secularists ever were able to do to Christianity." - "When you show up with curiosity in a public space it's remarkable what kinds of beautiful moments can occur." - "that one story, you know, opened up a huge vista to me of like, what have I been blind to? What's been going on that I've not paid any attention to?" - "We can act as if we are not shaped by historical time, place, location, historical contingency, but that just makes us blind to it because we are, and that's just what it means to be human." - "a lot of those are seen as scandalous because we've forgotten what Christianity is … we're screwing up right and left because we have refused to take seriously the basics of scripture and the basics of the Christian story." - "you are my neighbor. Regardless of what you claim about the identity of Jesus or the identity of, of Muhammad, you are my neighbor. And I owe to you love and I owe to you respect and I owe to you hospitality."
About Lee C. Camp
Lee C. Camp is the creator and host of No Small Endeavor, a podcast and radio show exploring what it means
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