Christian Nationalism - Part 2 - The House Boat

Summary

In this episode of 'Speaking of Faith', Bishop DeDe and Adam Eichelberger explore the intersection of faith and civic duty, particularly in the context of Christian nationalism. They discuss the importance of the baptismal covenant in the Episcopal Church, emphasizing that Christianity is fundamentally about relationship with God rather than mere religious practice. The conversation highlights the need for compassion, justice, and respect for diversity in both faith and civic life, while cautioning against the oppressive tendencies of Christian nationalism. The episode concludes with a call to action for listeners to reflect on their faith and its implications in society.

Keywords

faith, Christian nationalism, baptismal covenant, civic duty, American ideals, religion, community, Jesus, compassion, diversity

Takeaways

Christian nationalism conflates faith with patriotism.
The baptismal covenant is foundational to understanding our faith.
Christianity emphasizes relationship over religion.
Civic duty should reflect Christian ideals of compassion and justice.
We must respect the dignity of every human being.
Religious freedom is a cornerstone of American values.
Christianity invites rather than demands adherence.
Diversity in beliefs is essential for a healthy society.
Jesus teaches us to love our neighbors as ourselves.
Our faith should guide our actions in civic life.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Faith and Christian Nationalism
02:55 Understanding the Baptismal Covenant
05:46 Civic Duty and Christian Ideals
09:08 The Role of Religion in American Society
11:58 Christianity vs. Christian Nationalism
14:50 Conclusion and Call to Action

AI Disclosure: To support our staff in their limited time, many of our episode summaries are first generated by AI and then edited by the Communications Director to accurately reflect and preview our podcast episodes.

Transcript

Bishop DeDe (00:04.152)
Hey friends, welcome to the podcast, Speaking of Fate. In this podcast, we're talking about what we believe. I am Dee Dee Duncan Proby. I am the diocesan bishop of Central New York. If you're not sure where that is, it's Canada to Pennsylvania, Utica to Elmira, all the beautiful places and people in between. And I'm joined today by Adam Eichelberger. He is our director of communications and we're glad to be here to speak with you about our fate.

And one of the things about speaking about our faith is we may not agree. You may have totally different things that you believe or a different way of understanding and so you are welcome here as well. This is a space of learning, of curiosity and of seeking to know more and learn. Right now, in the last few weeks, we've been talking about Christian nationalism. If you haven't.

heard of Christian nationalism before. I feel certain you have experienced it because it is something that is happening all around us. People who believe that to be an American is to be a Christian and to be a Christian is to be patriotic. And there's been kind of a conflation of Christian beliefs with our civic understanding of America and patriotism to be nationally focused.

And so one of the things about Christian nationalism, and you've probably heard this before, it's kind of like a houseboat. It's not a good boat, not a good house. And so this is true for Christian nationalism. It's not a good brand of Christianity and it's not really what our civic understanding and American values are. So we're going to get into today as Christians, what is it that makes us a Christian?

Adam Eichelberger (01:43.551)
You

Bishop DeDe (02:00.364)
What do we believe? What do we believe to be true about our faith and how Jesus is calling us to be as people in this world? If you've listened to this podcast for a while, you know that back in the spring and in the early summer, we talked a lot about the baptismal covenant. In the Episcopal Church, the baptismal covenant is our beginning point. It is foundational. It is the covenant we've made with God.

And in baptism, we believe that God is who makes us Christians, that we receive God's gift of grace by being baptized into the kingdom of God or kindom of God, and we make this covenant with God. So I offer those to you. If you have not listened to those podcasts about the baptismal covenant, please do. You can still listen to this podcast. It won't throw you too much.

but I may mention of something that you might want to go back and learn more about. So as people of faith and speaking of our faith, in the Episcopal Church we begin with this covenant we've made at baptism. Our understanding is that we have believed something which then causes us to live in a particular way and that these beliefs in this covenant all circle around a relationship we have with God.

It has been said many times that Christianity is not a religion, it is relationship. Sometimes those kinds of sentences are helpful, sometimes they're a little bit trite. There is definitely a Christian religion with form and function. But our primacy as Christians is a relationship with God. That we love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength. That we love our neighbors and ourselves.

Jesus commands us to be in relationship, especially in relationship with the least among us, to pray for our enemies, to take a cup of cold water. Throughout the gospel of Jesus, there are these ways of knowing whether we are in on what God's up to or whether we are off messages. And we can feel pretty good because throughout the gospels, the disciples a lot of times are not getting it either.

Bishop DeDe (04:21.196)
This past Sunday in our readings, we had the disciples walking with Jesus. Jesus is talking about all that is going to happen and what God is doing. And the disciples are talking while he's talking and he says, what are you talking about? And they're like, well, we're talking about who's the greatest among us. So being off topic isn't unique to us even. So how does Jesus save us? And what does it mean to be a Christian? Our understanding of the baptismal covenant.

is that Jesus has come to show us the way to be a part of God's kingdom, that we are going to love God and love one another. And we begin with repentance, that we're going to repent of our selfishness, our greed, our avarice, our power mongering over people, that we are going to be focused in on compassion and mercy and grace, that the charisms of God are

transformative for our own lives. And so even in what I've just said, you can hear the difference between our civic understanding of American ideals, where you have, whether it's capitalism or you have other things, our faith calls us to certain actions and ways of being. And yes, we want those ways of being to be replicated in our societies, but not out of power over.

or a refutation of other people, but as an invitation that we all love our neighbors as ourselves. Now for you listener, how do you understand what it is to be a Christian? How do you identify as a person of faith, whatever your faith may be, whether a Jewish or Muslim or some other faith, how is your faith lived out in the way you behave civically?

And Adam, I've been talking for a while, so I don't know if you want to jump in here with something that sort of has sparked your interest as we talk about what it is to be a Christian, how Jesus saves us, and what it is that we're about as people of faith.

Adam Eichelberger (06:29.602)
Sure. So one of the first things that comes to my mind, and you mentioned it, Bishop Deedee, and again, listener, if you have the chance to go back and listen to earlier podcasts, when we start talking about the baptismal covenant, I do encourage you to do that. But in speaking about that, you can kind of take this baptismal covenant that we profess in the Episcopal Church into two parts. The first part of it starts talking about who is God. And the latter part, which is really applicable to what we're talking about in this conversation around

Bishop DeDe (06:53.441)
Mm

Adam Eichelberger (06:59.592)
faith, civic duty, and how that interacts or maybe even opposes Christian nationalism is it has to do with what we do for other people, right? You talked about this being a covenant, Bishop Deedee, and a covenant is not just like a promise or an agreement. It is something that is an exchange between two people, two parties, and it's bigger than just like a legal contract, right? And I wanted to share some of the text of

Bishop DeDe (07:09.591)
Mm

Bishop DeDe (07:15.757)
Mm

Adam Eichelberger (07:28.918)
the baptismal covenant, specifically what I'm talking about. It talks about, you continue in the apostles teaching and fellowship and the breaking of bread and prayers? Naturally, I do with God's help. Will you preserve in resisting evil? And whenever you fall into sin, repent and turn to the Lord. Will you proclaim by word and example, the good news of God in Christ? Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons loving your neighbor as yourself? Will you strive for justice, peace among all people?

and respect the dignity of every human being. And if you're listening to this and maybe wherever your walk is with God, maybe you're a person who doesn't necessarily profess Christianity, these are ideals that should be fundamental to who we are as human beings. These are the ideals that are supposed to uphold our American society, our duty as civic persons to when we see that there is injustice,

Speak out and stand up to it. When we see that there are those in need, we help them. When we do wrong things, we repent of those wrong things and we amend our lives to do better.

Bishop DeDe (08:39.558)
Which, and we've talked before Adam, but you know when you say those things it sounds like well why don't we want our society to be like that? Why wouldn't we want America to be just what you've described, whether it's you know compassion for others or the way we live our lives. And those are wonderful ideals and no they aren't just limited to, if you're listener, thinking well those aren't just limited to the Episcopal Church or to Christians. And that's true. And.

when we think about what it is to be an American with our constitution, the Bill of Rights, even our laws and the ways in which we conduct our society, there are a wide variety of ways in which we're trying to affirm dualism, that people can have different beliefs and believe all sorts of things, but when we come together as an American, we live under these certain tenets.

idea of living with a certain value set is true as an American and it is true as Christians. The difference is with the American value of the Constitution is that we're created equally, that we have religious freedom. You we talk a lot often about second amendment rights and gun rights, which is also an earlier podcast. But what is also true is our first amendment rights, that there's no state

religion that we have separation of church and state so that who we believe God to be and how we believe our Lives to be in relationship to God that we have freedom to exercise our religious beliefs without oppression or violence or in some way being maligned or dehumanized and We know that in America right now

anti -Semitism is just been increasing and increasing, as has Islamic hate. And often with Christians, there'll be this narrative that comes out that white Christians are oppressed too. But the difference is that that isn't actually true. I saw a meme the other day that said, make prayer legal in schools again. And I was kind of perplexed by it, because I thought, you know, prayer,

Bishop DeDe (11:03.878)
is legal. A child can pray, a student can pray. They actually have First Amendment rights to pray at school. There are prayer and Bible studies at schools. What is not legal is that it becomes coercive or somehow you can't be part of the football team if you're not coming to the prayer or you have to coercively be part of something. And so these places of boundary

Adam Eichelberger (11:20.994)
Mm

Bishop DeDe (11:32.75)
for some people can feel like they're being oppressed when actually a boundary is being set. In civic life, we cannot force someone else to view salvation in the same way we as Christians view it. We cannot institute that the baptismal covenant that everybody has to abide by it. We have the freedom to abide by it. And this kind of gets me back to that houseboat idea of it's not a good house, it's not a good boat.

Adam Eichelberger (11:47.446)
Right.

Adam Eichelberger (11:55.65)
Exactly.

Ha ha ha.

Bishop DeDe (12:02.378)
You know, with our faith, Jesus has come to save us and the kingdom of God has come near for God's purposes, purposes that at times we can only glimpse and don't know. The American ideals are so that our civic society can function well, so that we can have diversity and unity, so that we can be people who affirm different faiths and religions and creeds.

while all being united around the Constitution and our civic understanding of how life happens. So that no one is left out of the American dream. And we recognize that as an ideal because today people are left out of the American dream. People are suffering, people are struggling and trying to understand. But as Christians, as people who love Jesus, we know that we start with our faith and that it's something that is within us.

that is deep and that Jesus first of all saves us from our own selfish greed and we repent of that. And then we turn our lives to be about the teachings of Jesus in community with others. Throughout the scriptures, I find it interesting that when Jesus is faced with someone whose beliefs are different, we do not read about a Jesus that says, you're wrong and you're going to hell.

We read about a Jesus that says, consider the lilies of the field. This is what I have come that you may know peace and know it. I have come that you may know God. So there's an invitation in Christianity, an oppression. There is an offering in Christianity, not a demand. And Christian nationalism, I think, begins to taint our Christian faith because it becomes oppressive or demanding.

This is a Christian nation and all others should leave. We wanna make sure those people aren't valued here. Those ideas are not in keeping with our baptismal covenant, with the salvation of Jesus, and they also aren't in keeping with our American ideals. But it is important that we hold these intention and understand our Christianity can help us be better Americans.

Bishop DeDe (14:24.672)
and our patriotism can help us to understand better how we might exercise our faith, but never with demand and never with oppression. Well, this conversation, listener, we've talked quite a bit. I invite you to send in cards and comments and questions and what you would like to talk about. I also encourage you to do some reading.

We're going to have Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas with us at our upcoming convention. And she's done a lot of writing about topics that have to do with this. And she's also part of a little plug for her, part of a happening that's happening at St. John the Divine, I believe, in New York. But then there are books about this. And I encourage you to read the scriptures, to read, if you're Episcopalian, the baptismal covenant, to think about how you

live out your life and how you exercise your faith in your civic life and how we can create more room for diversity and for loving our neighbor, for praying for our enemies, for building up our own understanding that America is our beloved country and our first fealty, our first...

way we honor our faith is in being in a relationship with Jesus Christ and living that faith out. So thank you for being with us. I hope that you'll continue to learn and grow and come back and join us next time on the podcast as we continue to speak of our faith and learn more about what we believe to be true in life. God bless you and keep you and I look forward to speaking with you soon.