Video: Shane Claiborne, Chuck Colson, and Greg Boyd (by Ryan Rodrick Beiler)
On a recent edition of American Public Media's Speaking of Faith, host Krista Tippett presents a conversation among three generations of evangelical leaders -- Chuck Colson, Greg Boyd, and Shane Claiborne -- about how (or if) Christians should be involved in politics. The event was part of a larger pastor's conference in San Diego sponsored by Zondervan that several Sojourners staff attended; they gave rave reviews of this panel discussion. See for yourself.
You can listen to or download various audio formats on the Speaking of Faith site or watch the video online.
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Comments
Is it possible to get a transcript? I can't really watch or listen to multimedia in my work context. It would disturb others, and it much more difficult to pause and restart when a priority need arises.
Posted by: B-W | April 22, 2008 3:00 PM
B-W:
If you go to the Speaking of Faith website they usually have a typed transcript of the interviews as well as a lot of extras - book suggestions, music, etc. It is a really great website!
Posted by: Libby | April 22, 2008 3:30 PM
Chuck Colson was effusive in his defense that Caesars of various world powers have the Christ-ordered right to compel their Christians to kill each other's Christians. Chuck, true to his Marine Corps and Nixonian dirty trickster rationalisations, is a Constantinian Christian syncretiser in the mold of all the state escalations and circles of violence of Christendom and its persecutions, crusdaes and endless millions sacrificed in theoretical "just" wars that always in retrospect are just more war.
Chuck actually says that since we aren't in the same nation as our enemies, we can only love our neighbor by loving our country, in service of participating in it's Caesar's orders to kill what it calls the enemy - even if they are other Christians similarly commanded by their duty to wield the sword against us.
Just as his Marine Corps philosophy of his sixties Vietnam service epitomised for him, "you have to save the village by destroying the village," he believes that you love your neighbor best by hating your neighbor's enemy - with prejudice.
Posted by: The Lost Old Boys | April 22, 2008 3:45 PM
"Chuck actually says that since we aren't in the same nation as our enemies, we can only love our neighbor by loving our country,"
That's not what he said.
Posted by: kevin s. | April 22, 2008 4:17 PM
Kevin, he did so say that. I heard the program on the radio broadcast last weekend.
D
Posted by: Don | April 22, 2008 5:32 PM
What Chuck said, which indeed does boil down to loving one's enemy by substituting service to one's own neighbors - one's own country - militarily instead. He makes some stunningly illogical transitions and quotes C.S. Lewis, whose own Christianity was within and in defense of a state-run Anglican church that merged nationalism and religion:
"C.S. Lewis wrote a wonderful essay about Christian patriotism. He said "It's not wrong to love your country, because God has put you in an area where you're supposed to love the world, but all you can do is love your neighbors. Aquinas said the same thing about
military service. He said someone who serves to defend the innocent is acting out of Christian love. You can love the Lord your God with all your heart and mind and soul and also love your country as a way of loving your neighbor.
"The New Testament is pretty clear that you render to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's. The New Testament's also very clear that you are to respect the authorities because they are appointed by God to wield the sword in order for us to live peaceable lives. So
government has a role Biblically, well established by 2,000 years of reflection that the job of government is to preserve order and to do justice and to restrain evil. As a military man, I served my country proudly and would do so again. A military man takes an oath to support the Constitution because it is God's ordained instrument to preserve order. Otherwise you've got chaos."
Here is C.S. Lewis, inadvertently absurd in his defense of two Caesars requiring Christians to render each other's lives (while loving each other as enemies) to their respective Caesars, in World War I:
"I have often thought to myself how it would have been if, when I served in the first world war, I and some young German had killed each other simultaneously and found ourselves together a moment after death. I cannot imagine that either of us would have felt any resentment or even any embarrassment. I think we might have laughed over it." (Mere Christianity, p. 107)
Posted by: Sojourner Truth | April 22, 2008 5:34 PM
Nothing in that passage says that you can only love your neighbor by loving your country. Nothing in that statement says that we should substitute military service for any other act of loving our neighbor, which would be an utterly absurd statement for him to make, given his ministry.
Posted by: kevin s. | April 22, 2008 6:18 PM
"Nothing in that statement says that we should substitute military service for any other act of loving our neighbor, which would be an utterly absurd statement for him to make, given his ministry."
And yet, C.S. Lewis' own statements were equally absurd. It might be that you can't believe this is what he meant, because you believe it is inconsistent with his ministry.
But he did mean this. Notice in the actual context, how he could not bring himself to use Jesus' words, "You have heard it said of old, love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you that hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you."
Chuck quickly changed "love your enemy" as pointed out by Shane, back to "love your neighbor." The perceptive comment in scripture, "Who then is my neighbor?" is the one Chuck won't dare think about.
Chuck will not utter the words of the Sermon on the Mount. He prefers to push them away from the centrality of Christian faith to a periphery supposedly irrelevant to our present dispensation, so that he can try to continue to serve his two masters. Like many from the time of Constantine, he avers, I must insist, Jesus' teachings are not for us.
Posted by: Sojourner Truth | April 22, 2008 6:35 PM
John Dean can tell us a lot about Chuck Colson before and after he was 'born again':
...in 1973, Dean became the first high-level Nixon official to turn against the administration, famously testifying before the Senate Watergate Committee that the President (as well as Dean himself) was personally involved in the Watergate cover-up. As a result of his refusal to copy the example of blindly loyal authoritarian followers such as G. Gordon Liddy and Charles Colson -- who lied and covered-up for their leader -- Dean became one of the most hated enemies of Nixon followers, a hatred which, he later discovered, would make him the target of the right-wing authoritarian tactics which he previously wielded against Nixon's enemies.
In 1991, as Dean recounts at length, he learned that 60 Minutes and Time Magazine were preparing to feature a new book, entitled Silent Coup, which claimed that Dean himself was the one who ordered the Watergate break-in. The book alleged that Dean's motive was that his wife, Maureen, had a connection to a Washington, DC call-girl operation and thus had knowledge of various sex scandals involving Democrats, and Dean sought to obtain documentation to use against them.
The very idea that Dean himself had ordered the Watergate break-in because of his wife's connection to a call-girl service, and that these secrets were somehow kept for 20 years, was completely absurd on its face. And once Dean vehemently denied these allegations, both 60 Minutes and Time investigated the claims and both decided not to run the story -- a noble decision which, in Time's case, led to the loss of the $50,000 it had paid for the rights to run an excerpt of the book.
But using right-wing smear techniques which, back then, were still new, but which are now a staple of the "conservative" movement, these patently false allegations against Dean were aggressively promoted by right-wing ideologues and then accepted and given great attention by the mainstream media. The book's publishers enlisted both right-wing follower G. Gordon Liddy and by-then-born-again Christian activist Charles Colson -- both of whom still hated Dean for his blasphemy in testifying truthfully against the President -- to promote the book and push its allegations against Dean.*
Excerpted from Glenn Greenwald's review of John Dean's book,'Conservatives Without Conscience"
Chuck Colson has his very own personal moral compass.
It's called the end justifies the means.
Is this Christian?
Posted by: justintime | April 22, 2008 7:27 PM
What bothered me most about Colson was his reaction to the revelation of the identity of "Deep Throat." I still got the impression that he wanted to save Nixon at all costs, and I also realized just how much resentment the right in general still harbored toward the Washington Post, even after over 30 years. Even some Christians I knew were upset with him.
Posted by: Rick Nowlin | April 22, 2008 10:28 PM
Many on the right think Nixon was just trying to do the right thing and it was too bad the plumbers got caught in the Watergate and too bad John Dean the traitor ratted on the 'good guys'.
If you believe your cause justifies all necessary means, then your duty is not to get exposed as unethical or caught breaking the law, because that could jeopardize the cause.
Gordon Liddy, Chuck Colson and Ollie North all took a fall for the cause.
I don't think prison time changed them all that much.
They still believe what they did was right and only the whistle blowers are to blame for their disgrace.
Bush commuted Scooter Libby's prison sentence after exposing a covert CIA operative and being convicted on four counts of perjury and obstruction of justice.
Bush did this to keep Scooter quiet.
His silence was rewarded by a position at the Hudson Institute -- a right wing 'think tank'.
Do you think it's likely Scooter will ever recover the truth in his life?
Posted by: justintime | April 23, 2008 12:59 AM
I thought the dialog in the video was generally excellent. There were many points of agreement as well as points of distinct disagreement. There is a meaningful basis for furthering the dialog! It is refreshing to see these meaty ideas being discussed seriously and collegially in a brotherly and sisterly fashion.
It is crucial that "they will know we are Christians by our love!" It is all too often not visible enough or sometimes even at all.
Blessings!
Posted by: Jim | April 23, 2008 2:35 AM
So I take it that Colson is the only conservative on the panel?
The only hard-core conservative, yes. What bugs me about Colson, however (and I have two of his books), is that, except for his conservative ideology -- which to me contradicts the Gospel in some key ways -- on a theological level he has things pretty much down.
The first time I ever heard of Greg Boyd, however, was in a front-page story in the New York Times in which he denounced the use of conservative politics in the pulpit -- he said he was offended by combination of faith and American nationalism he saw in other churches and preached against it, and about a thousand of the parishioners in the St. Paul megachurch he pastors left. Interestingly, based on his writings Colson might agree with that.
Posted by: Rick Nowlin | April 23, 2008 10:26 AM
Colson would absolutely agree with that portion of Boyd's rhetoric. Boyd's presentation, accompanied by his public declarations in support of abortion rights, led many in his congregation to the conclusion that he was rebuking their political values in favor of his own.
I would note that the exodus was fairly gradual. The local Calvinist joint here (run by John Piper, who despises Boyd) was actively recruiting members from their church. Boyd was also more open about his theological leanings. which are very controversial to some.
I think it would be fair to say that the panel featured a conservative, moderate and liberal theologians. It would also be fair to say the same of their respective ideologies.
Posted by: kevin s. | April 23, 2008 1:30 PM
As I listened to the debate, I'm sure glad that Boyd and Claiborne didn't make accusations against Colson like some of the comments above. Thank God they had substance as they argued and resisted arguing against a Constantinian, dispensational straw man. Way to demonize the opposition or even smear Colson's reputation as a Christian instead of listening to a conversation and trying to understand all view points. I thought I left all this viciousness when I left the Republican party....
That being said on Chuck's defense, His own defense of patriotism and loving your neighbor through the C.S. Lewis example was quite weak. Clearly you could tell that his patriotism clouds his view of Just War. In fact, his forcefulness of the Romans 13 passage seemed like he embraced more of a "Total-War" theory, rather than Just-War.
Even though I personally hold to a Just War theory, unfortunately it has been abused to justify just-about-every war, including this conflict that the U.S. is currently fighting. I would love to have a conversation with Mr. Colson and ask how a just war person can justify aspects of the Iraq war such as a preemptive strike and torture?
Posted by: Joel | April 23, 2008 1:41 PM
Boyd's presentation, accompanied by his public declarations in support of abortion rights, ...
Do you know this for a fact?
Posted by: Rick Nowlin | April 23, 2008 1:46 PM
"Do you know this for a fact?"
Yes.
Posted by: kevin s. | April 23, 2008 2:26 PM
kevin -- Coming from you, I would need some proof.
But just from an outside view point, I look at Nixon now as though he was a liberal republican in the way Rudy is, in, but quite on the left with economic policies.
I somewhat agree -- I was still in grade school at the time, but I remember my dad hated him with that same passion. That said, I was going to a Christian academy at the time and "prophesied" that he was on his way out (because I believed at the time that many people who supported him believed he was next to God).
And I believe he received more passionate vitrolic rhetoric then Reagan or the other Bush have received from the left. Just kind of strange because he acted more like the left it appears to me?
Actually, that's not really true -- there were mass anti-Reagan demonstrations in major cities, including mine, around 1982 -- but the conservative apparatus of that day pretty much shut down the left, which was not revived until the war in Iraq. It's amazing to me that much of the same right wing that vilified Hillary Clinton in the early 1990s is now supporting her, even though her positions haven't changed since.
But back to the topic. I'd just like the church to focus less on ideology and "getting what's 'mine,'" simply worshipping God and doing right by others. That would go a long way in bringing the church together and bringing outsiders to him.
Posted by: Rick Nowlin | April 23, 2008 3:40 PM
Boyd has been quite clear in the past, and is quite clear on this tape, that he opposes abortion. He refuses, however, to make it the end-all and be-all of his politics.
How that amounts to "his public declarations in support of abortion rights" is beyond me, unless one believes that the only criteria by which one judges policy and candidates revolves around oppotistion to abortion.
And of course John Piper despises Boyd. Piper can brook not even small disagreement with his Calvinism, let alone the kind of open theology Boyd espouses.
Posted by: carl copas | April 23, 2008 3:47 PM
"opposition" not "oppotistion"
Posted by: carl copas | April 23, 2008 3:51 PM
Mick: "But just from an outside view point , I look at Nixon now as though he was a liberal republican in the way Rudy is , in , but quite on the left with economic policies .
And I believe he received more passionate vitrolic rhetoric then Reagan or the other Bush have received from the left . Just kind of strange because he acted more like the left it appears to me ?"
This makes no sense at all to me, Mick.
You wouldn't be projecting now, would you?
NIXON: "Well, when the president does it that means that it is not illegal."
Nixon schooled Cheney, Rumsfeld and many others on 'the cause justifies all means necessary' tactics of right wing political strategery that is standard GOP operating procedure today.
Posted by: justintime | April 23, 2008 4:39 PM
NIXON: "If the president, for example, approves something because of the national security, or in this case because of a threat to internal peace and order of significant magnitude, then the president's decision in that instance is one that enables those who carry it out, to carry it out without violating a law. Otherwise they're in an impossible position."
Nixon trained the key players and set precedent for the Bush/Cheney administration.
Now look where we're at.
Posted by: justintime | April 23, 2008 4:56 PM
Mick: "Yet at the same time Nixon deserves the credit for assembling the new political coalition of working class and ethnic voters who would later become known as “Reagan Democrats.” Nixon was the first Republican to win a majority of working class, Catholic, and labor union voters, as well as voters with only a grade school education."
Part of the "Southern strategy" fashioned for Nixon by Kevin Phillips, which aimed deliberately to play on Southern white racism to pull those voters away from the Democratic party. It worked all too well.
Posted by: carl copas | April 23, 2008 9:00 PM
"I think it would be fair to say that the panel featured a conservative, moderate and liberal theologians." kevin s
To suggest Colson is a theologian is a joke; he is, at best, a well-read layman; and from what I know of the other two guys, they'd probably prefer to be identified as pastors or shepherds, not theologians.
Posted by: canucklehead | April 23, 2008 9:09 PM
We are sons and daughters of the living God. Disciples of Christ. Debating the short comings of others does not become us. We are better served simply by loving them….
Posted by: JM | April 24, 2008 1:49 AM
Just came across this and was saddened to read the hate filled diatribe against Chuck Colson from "Lost Old Boys."
Name calling and slander are inappropriate, and amount to murder according to Jesus.
"Chuck, true to his Marine Corps and Nixonian dirty trickster rationalisations, is a Constantinian Christian syncretiser..."
Let's please treat one another with respect. It appears to me that the above mentioned post violates Rules of Conduct #9--courtesy.
Likewise the most recent post from "canucklehead" is in violation. "To suggest Colson is a theologian is a joke."
I humbly ask for civil and courteous discourse.
Posted by: Hendo | April 24, 2008 3:44 AM
Chuck Colson is not infallible. Since he has so much influence, he must be called on his errors of exegesis.
He has even supported the present-day use of torture. On the video, I hear him gloss over as mere "mistakes" Constantinian Christians burning "heretics" at the stake.
In support of religious violence, he follows in a long intolerant tradition, from Emperors to Popes to Luther to Calvin to late Ireland. He speaks of 2,000 years of reflection justifying all that, when it ought to have culminated in a realization of how completely it has failed Jesus' Great Commission.
Certainly we don't propose burning him at the stake nor torturing him, nor that Christians in other lands called by their own "Caesars" to kill, should put Chuck in their sights, should he in a fit of religious patriotism decide to take up weapons as a Marine again, as he says. That heresy of hate masquerading as love is Chuck's position, not ours. Chuck is too old to actually be put in harm's way, but his blandishments are leading others believing Chuck's own words, so mellifluously spoken in his best disembodied Breakpoint voice as if of divine origin, to their doom.
No, Chuck, the United States Constitution is not God's ordained dispensation to this age, replacing the Ten Commandments, to be used as stone tablet justification for one flawed people to rule all others by military conquest. That's an old, old story, dating back to the temptation given to Jesus to bow down before the one who offered dominion over such worldly powers.
Get thee behind me, Chuck Colson.
This is not hate - precisely the opposite. Jesus rebuked the greatest disciple, Peter, in just the same way. This is pointing out the drastic disconnect between what Jesus teaches and Chuck's own syncretic fusing of reductionist nationalism with Christianity.
Posted by: Lost Old Boys | April 24, 2008 12:15 PM
Don't forget Colson is a strict conservative. They believe in the simple black and white explanation that they are all good and they are against evil. All evil must be eliminated using whatever tactics are necessary. You are evil if you disagree, question, or make a contrary point even if it is logical.
To do otherwise would water down the power they seek.
Posted by: steve | April 24, 2008 12:33 PM
I humbly ask for civil and courteous discourse.
Posted by: Hendo | April 24, 2008 3:44 AM
Thankfully, Belief-Net's definition of "civil and courteous discourse" is somewhat larger than your's, Hendo.
Tell me, on what basis would you apparently deem Chuck Colson a theologian? He's written a book or two on religion?
Does that make Frank Peretti a theologian also? Tim LaHaye? Jerry Jenkins? Stephen Carter? Anne Rice?
Posted by: canucklehead | April 24, 2008 5:35 PM
Hendo, I too laughed when I saw Colson described as a theologian. I've always thought of him as a political appointee that bashed government on one hand then took a huge paycheck in the other hand from the government. Then, after serving prison time he used his business skills and the product of Chrisianity to form a successful free from any taxes business.
I admire his business and marketing aptitude and I am sure his prison ministries have helped many people who were viscious and evil to innocents and perhaps they won't hurt anyone anymore.
This kind of goes back to my point that if you don't fall to the knees and accept everything the conservative says, then there is risk in being called uncivil and discourteous at the very least.
Posted by: steve | April 25, 2008 9:25 AM
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