Angela Weszely:
Welcome to ProGrace on Abortion: Real Talk, No Politics. I'm Angela Weszely, CEO and co-founder of ProGrace. We are a community of people who want to have the conversation around abortion. Now, it's not currently happening in our churches because there's so much tension around the debate and having a civil conversation is hard. The church is divided but it's time to come together. And the way we'll do that is to model our approach after Jesus, not politics. If you feel like you don't really belong in either the pro-life or pro-choice camp and you think surely Jesus has a better way than welcome to the ProGrace community, a place you can belong. Hi. Welcome to the podcast. I'm really excited to be here today with Kaitlyn Schiess. So great to have you with us.
Kaitlyn Schiess:
Thanks. So great to be with you.
Angela Weszely:
Yeah. And just for context for everybody, the whole reason I founded ProGrace was because I was disturbed that it seems our only response to abortion was political and even partisan as we'll get into in the podcast. And I was longing for a common theological approach to how we interact with people. And so I think because that's my focus, Kaitlyn, we don't talk about politics. I often don't even know how to think about it. And so that conversation with you really was encouraging and unlocked some things in my mind, and I'm really excited for our community to have that as well because we know we need to be involved politically, but so much of it doesn't feel like Jesus so we back out. So I'm really looking forward to you walking us through and we will link to both of your books in the show notes because those are also been really helpful to me and my team. So I'm excited. We'll dive in.
Kaitlyn Schiess:
Thank you. Yeah. I'm excited too. I love that. I love talking to people who are wary about politics.
Angela Weszely:
Yeah. Exactly. And there's different callings, right? So that's what I loved about talking to you. I feel like I have this non-political call and then it really makes me respect your call to speak about that because I know it's not my expertise so looking forward to hearing from you. And we started our conversation a couple of weeks ago talking about this idea of checking the box as a Christian. And I grew up this way. I think you did too. Where we stood on abortion was a certain way of measuring where we were spiritually and if we had this view of voting for a certain person, that checked the box. And you were able to break that down differently in terms of what is Jesus really calling us to do? And I'd love for you just to launch from there.
Kaitlyn Schiess:
Yeah. Yeah. I love that. Yes. I did grow up in a context as well where not only was abortion a really important political issue ... Even if we didn't actually vote this way, surveys have come out showing that abortion, even amongst people, you'd think it's really important, it's less politically important. But at least in conversations it did seem like this is the most important thing. And there's even some history in American Christianity of saying like, oh, we don't want to get involved, but we've been forced to because of these issues. Abortion being a big one of, okay, we have to get involved now on behalf of unborn lives, but we didn't want to get involved politically. But also underneath all of that is this idea that, okay, well that means that when I engage politically, my responsibility is to vote for pro-life candidates. And then that checks the box for me and I'm done. I've done my political duty. Maybe even I've done my duty to represent the things I care about. Like, oh, I'm a pro-life person because I voted for these pro-life candidates and that's all I have to do.
And I both want to say our politics is not intended to be a space where you show your greatest identity or community where it's just a sense of a lawn sign or a T-shirt. Sometimes those can be fine. They're not immoral. But we treat all of our politics like it's just about showing off who I am and what community I belong to, which is not a great way of doing politics. Because if your way of engaging politically is showing everyone who you are and what community you belong to, you can't compromise. It's your identity we're talking about. It's if you're a good person, if you're one of the good guys and not the bad guys, you can't compromise. You can't change your mind. You can't say, well, in this election this feels like the pressing issue, but maybe in the next election it'll be a different issue. You can't do any of that because politics is about showcasing your identity and your sense of community.
And the other part that I think is troubling about this way of engaging politically is that it limits politics to just this one often presidential vote. Sometimes we'll talk a little bit more broadly than that. Maybe we'll talk about national politics, but still we tend to think my politics is boiled down to this one vote that has to represent everything I care about and believe in. And for Christians then, everything I think God cares about. And then we don't recognize that politics in a just really broad sense means building a common life together.
So yes, we can vote for certain candidates that we think represent values that we care about or that might fight for policies we think are good, but politics also includes holding those leaders accountable. So you voted for them and they start doing things you don't think are good. Having some sense of responsibility to write a letter or show up to a meeting. It also means just building relationships with your literal neighbors. There's been a real breakdown of any sense of neighborhood in most American contexts. So part of the check the box issue is, well, you haven't really treated politics like the thing it is if you think it's just a space for you to show who you are, but also that one vote is just one small part of your political life. It shouldn't be a box I've checked. It should be okay, I've participated in this meaningful way. It is important, but it's one small part of a whole life that includes volunteering at a community center, that involves bringing a casserole to your next-door neighbors, that involves local politics, which we can get into more, but it involves so many other things.
And hopefully not only does that much wider sense of politics mean we can't just think of it as checking a box, but it hopefully also means that we can take a little bit of a breath because sometimes when I get really passionate about this and I'll be like, there's all these ways we can engage politically, sometimes people hear like, oh, there's so many things I have to do. You've just added to ... I thought I could just vote for this one vote. I could just vote for president and that would be good enough. But I hope it actually makes us come down little bit. In part because this isn't your one shot. You don't have this one box to check and then that's it. And if you make the wrong decision, well you've really messed up all of your political life. It's not that. You will make wrong decisions. I make wrong political decisions. But that's one small part of a whole life.
And if this one vote feels impossible, if this one vote feels like there is not a good candidate for me to vote for that I feel totally great about, which to be honest is probably how we should feel all of the time.
Angela Weszely:
We should.
Kaitlyn Schiess:
There's no perfect person. Jesus is not on the ballot.
Angela Weszely:
Exactly.
Kaitlyn Schiess:
So if that's true, we can take a breath and go, I'm making the best choice that I can. I'm being as wise and faithful as I can. And then if this vote doesn't represent a bunch of things I care about, I have other opportunities and other places and other people in the body of Christ who are working on those things even if that's not the thing that I'm spending all of my time working on.
Angela Weszely:
I love it. And we will get to all these. And my mind is going a million places. I think hope is one of them as well. I do want listeners to not feel overloaded with more things, but actually I think I do disconnect when it's just at the national level and I think there's nothing I can do. What I wanted to camp out on a bit before we move on is identity and community that comes from politics. And you mentioned Christians who are pro-life. There are a lot of Christians who are pro-choice. So what's interesting is I was thinking as you were talking, that means we're building our identity and community along those lines rather than along the kingdom. I don't know if you have any thoughts on that. And we're picking who are we valuing more. The woman and her needs, the child and her needs, which is that in itself is antithetical to the Jesus way. So what are you seeing along those lines? Because it isn't just pro-life. Christians are divided between these two camps.
Kaitlyn Schiess:
Yeah. That's a great question. And it is in the interest of some political leaders or commentators or media companies to tell you that your politics is your identity and community and to say, and that means you fit in this one little box. So for example, even the way I was speaking is assuming Christian equals Republican equals pro-life. That benefits people for us to think of Christians that way. On the other hand, it also ... I am a doctoral student at Duke, so I interact with a lot of students in the Divinity school at Duke, most of whom are not conservative politically or sometimes theologically either. And so for them, sometimes it's like, okay, I left that box and then there's a new box that someone else wants to put me in that says, if I've changed my mind about some political questions, I can't have just this diversity of opinions that don't fit neatly in a party. No, I need a new community to belong to that determines for me what I think about things which is partially just a feature of human finitude. We're just limited and fallen and so we both can't know everything just because we're human and then also struggle to know things well because we sin and so we need help.
I can't possibly have a well-formed opinion on every political issue. So in some sense, it's good that we say, okay, I find a community to belong to that helps me. I find a party. Sometimes parties can be provisionally good. They can just help us organize some values together. The downside in a fallen world is that we feel pressure to just fit into that box. It's really hard to belong to a community and say and I disagree with some things. This community believes. What's beautiful about Christianity and why I wrote a whole book about spiritual formation and politics and spent a lot of it saying, I actually think we don't need to reinvent the wheel. I think we have some good resources from just normal Christian history that can help us. And one of those is the life of the church. Which seems like a pretty crazy thing to say these days because we do have some pretty high profile examples of the church being captivated by partisan politics of particular pastors or churches saying, yeah, to be a Christian does mean to be a Republican or to be a Democrat or to vote for this person or act this way.
However, most of us don't actually belong to those churches. They take up a lot of air time. Most of us belong to churches that are not perfectly diverse politically or theologically, but for the most part, we belong to churches that we don't agree with everything, with everyone in them. And we believe this totally radical wild thing that through the practices of baptism and communion, we belong to one another in a way more foundational than our biological families, than the racial or ethnic lines that divide us, then nationality, then socioeconomics. There are so many ways in which especially our political lives tell us, this is who you belong to and this is who you are. And the church very imperfectly, but still by the grace of God amazingly has said no, that's not actually foundationally who you are. You actually belong to the people of God that spans time and the world.
And amazingly, the prayers that we're praying in a different language are being prayed in another part of the world and the things that we believe are believed by people who don't speak the same language, who don't have the same social setting that we do and that's amazing. And that can be, if we're thoughtful about it, a way to rightly frame our political lives to say we have opportunities to engage in politics on behalf of our neighbors, out of love for our neighbors, out of love for humans made in the image of God. But we also have this powerful tool that a lot of our neighbors don't have to resist this temptation to get put into a box or boxed into a community that then determines everything we believe. We can show up to a meeting for the party we belong to or we can show up to a special interest group that wants to advocate for something and it can feel really pressured to go along with what everyone in this community says and not have any differences of opinion.
And then we show up at church on Sunday and many of us pray the Lord's prayer or say a creed that people have said for thousands of years, and we might not be aware of it, but I do think it's forming us to think, okay, I actually can be the dissenting voice in this party or in this group that's meeting because this is not most foundationally who I am. I can belong to these people and love these people, but nothing's threatened here. If I get kicked out of this community that wasn't most foundationally who I belonged to. The people of God through the death and resurrection of Christ, that's who I most deeply foundationally belong to.
Angela Weszely:
I 100% agree with you and what's going through my head is have you seen ... Obviously something's been broken in the church. If we've become so partisan, that sense of family, belonging to this, getting our identity and community within the church isn't happening to the extent it could or should. Where are you seeing bright places of hope or what advice do you have for people or leaders to ... Because here's what I'm finding. We've done some research. Pastors are more hesitant than ever to talk about divisive issues such as abortion, which is what our research was about, because of partisanship politics, which we'll talk about. So what is some advice for people to build that type of identity and community within the church? And we're Christians first. We're brothers and sisters in Christ first and our political community comes after that.
Kaitlyn Schiess:
Yeah.
Angela Weszely:
Where are some places where it's working?
Kaitlyn Schiess:
One quick example I'll give that people can access really easily is there's a short film on YouTube called The Ordinance. It's not about abortion, but it is about a difficult political question. And it was a group of Christians and some non-Christians in Texas who wanted to pass statewide legislation to put restrictions on payday loan places because payday loan places for people who aren't familiar charge exorbitantly high interest rates and they pop up near hospitals in low income communities. So they're pretty explicitly exploiting poor people and lots of places in the US have tried to ... It's a weird legal loophole that they exist at all. They really shouldn't. And so people have tried to put restrictions on them, but they're very profitable, so powerful people want them to still exist. So this group of people wanted to pass statewide legislation. It just wasn't happening. We can talk more about this, but sometimes it's like big national stuff is both the hardest to do and can require the greatest sacrifice of things that maybe you shouldn't sacrifice to get it done. So they said, okay, that can't happen. We're just going to go county by county and try and get county regulations passed on payday loan places.
And it's a beautiful short film both about the difficulty of saying like, okay, we're trying to discern what politically we should support as Christians. There's a moment when a pastor is like, there's someone in my church who owns a payday loan place. This is challenging. This is a difficult conversation for us to have. And also it's across the nomination lines. There's Catholics and Baptists and a bunch of Christians working together on this. So I would just say, look that up. It's a great ... Just to give you some hope to give you some imagination for this. But in terms specifically even of abortion, when we were talking earlier, I was sharing about how at my church, very politically diverse church, pretty theologically diverse church too, but very politically diverse. And the Sunday after the Dobbs decision came out, one of our pastors went to a Sunday school class of young adults and we met regularly to study scripture together and just said, we're just going to talk about what happened.
We're going to talk about what this means for our community. We live in a southern state but in a very progressive city. So there's big conversations happening around us and was feeling this temptation to say either we go with the conservative Christian camp on this and we're hearing some messages from that camp that we don't agree with. On the other hand, we're in a really progressive city. We're hearing some messages about it that we really don't agree with in our city either. And I think what made that possible was both just the courage of this pastor just to make the decision to say, Hey, we're going to talk about this in the heat of it, big decision. But also the wisdom and the posture of this pastor. I honestly, looking back on that, think nothing was really decided. We didn't come up with a statement we could all agree on. We didn't have some decision we made.
It more was this pastoral concern of I want you to know that the things happening in the world, things that inevitably affect all of us or people we love are things we should talk about in our community. We won't do it perfectly. We're going to disagree, but I don't want us to section out our lives between the spiritual and everything else, or especially the spiritual and the political, which we often can do. So even that framing of it was good. And then I honestly think the best thing this pastor did was she just seemed unfazed. It seemed like even though there was moments when it got tense or someone went off on a little monologue and you could feel a few other people going, Ooh, that, I did not agree with that. She didn't seem like anything was threatened. It didn't seem like she had to fix things.
The image that came to my mind that often comes to my mind in the church is I have been in context where it felt like we're on a ship together and there's all of these holes in the ship and we're just plugging as many holes as we can to try and keep the thing afloat. And that kind of anxiety, even if she had said everything I agreed with, it would've changed how I felt about it and how the room felt. It's just we are going to sink if we don't just pop up all these holes and keep them water from gushing in versus what if it was like, Hey, actually we can swim. The water will come in and we'll be fine and we'll flex the muscles that maybe we haven't flexed before and maybe we need to learn how to swim well together, but nothing is threatened by this. If we discover we disagree on some things, that doesn't mean we can't be in community together.
I think that's what often is both a really understandable feeling, but then can cause so much difficulty is both pastors and people in churches think, I'm afraid that if we talk about this, I will learn things about you that I really don't like, that I might not even think I can still be in community with you because of. But if we start with this sense of no, not only do we have the theology that says we belong to one another, we have practices that tell us this. However often we baptize someone, we remember that this is what binds us together. However often we do communion, we remind each other this is what binds us together. We have practices, we have theology, and then it means when we come to that place where this is threatened, we say, actually, I won't learn anything about you that prevents the grace of God from creating relationship between us. That's not possible. There's just nothing that I could learn about you.
I might learn things about you that make our relationship difficult or that make me worried about you. There's obviously things I could learn that would make this hard, but nothing I learn about you will mean I can't be in relationship with you. That it's impossible that God can't do that. So if we believe that and then try and have that even just posture with our bodies, we just communicate to people, I love you and I am not worried that this conversation will destroy possibility of community. Might make it hard, but there's nothing eternal that is threatened here.
Angela Weszely:
And that's what she did. I was sitting listening to what did the pastor do? She modeled that so that then you guys could come along and extend that to each other. The other thing she did that's really interesting ... I get a lot of people saying, what should we say from the pulpit? We've become so Sunday morning? And that's like a telling. She didn't do that. She did an asking in a smaller context. That's also very helpful as well to start this conversation in places where maybe leaders feel safe and they're just asking their staff team exactly what your pastor did to that small group. I think there's some real wisdom in that. It means we have to rethink how we have these discussions. I think that's why it feels like there's so much at stake if you're going to make a statement from front you get all these emails and people leave the church where if you start the conversation a different way like she did, that's brilliant. Well done to your pastor.
Kaitlyn Schiess:
Yeah. Yeah. She's great.
Angela Weszely:
And I love that idea that there's nothing you can say, even that is such a more beautiful picture of the church than politics. There's nothing you can say, there's nothing we can disagree about that will get you kicked out of this camp. Because I think that's why we all fall in line, even politically. We know what it feels like to say one thing and have a person assume this litany of stereotypes about us, where if we can be free from that in the church, that's a beautiful picture, really beautiful picture.
Kaitlyn Schiess:
And it takes practice. I think what is hard is I can imagine someone listening and thinking, yeah, it would just be great if I just believed that, but that's not how it works. I don't just switch one day. And it's like it takes practice of having that thought come in your brain of, oh, no, no, no. If we have this conversation, this ends the relationship, or oh, they said this thing, we can't be friends anymore. Having that thought come to your brain and over and over and over again practicing saying, no, I know that that's not true, and I go to scripture and I ask the Holy Spirit to help me, but I can learn over time to have my instinctual response not be what I have been trained for it to be by the world around me, especially by the political world.
Angela Weszely:
Yeah. So you're talking about this internal work. That's spiritual formation there too. That's the internal work. And then you also talked about a common language. I always think the internal work comes first. We have to have that posture you're talking about. But you did talk about a common language that would make these conversations easier. What have you learned and seen from that? Because so many times we'll say something and someone will say it back and it's like, that's not what I said, but that's what they heard, and some of that's our language choice.
Kaitlyn Schiess:
Yeah. Some of it is this practice of learning to ask good questions or like you just said, repeating back to someone what they said with a genuine desire to make sure that you have understood. I do a lot of working where I go to churches and do workshops on political life or go to Christian schools and do a workshop on political life, and I typically start with at least 20-ish or maybe 30 minutes of here's a biblical theology of politics, and sometimes I understand why people are like, just get to the practical stuff. I just want to get into the tips for conversations or the tell me how to vote, which I won't do anyway. But I always start that way even if it's short, just to say not only do we need, as you just described, common language, but as Christians, we often have either been in communities that said, it's self-evident how Christians should be political. And so we'll give you a voter guide and that'll tell you how to vote and it'll be great. Or we've been in communities that said, that's a completely separate sphere of your life that has nothing to do with Christianity.
Angela Weszely:
Don't even bring it to this.
Kaitlyn Schiess:
Don't even bring it up. And so neither of those churches have we really learned a theology of political life. So I start with, here's a picture from Genesis to Revelation. Genesis, a commission given to Eve in the garden to rule and reign. Political words used in Genesis one and two to describe their commission to seek the flourishing of God's creation, to take the good gifts God has given and make not just procreate, but make a flourishing community. To rule and reign over other creatures, not just humans. There's a vocation and a calling given to them. Something about image of God is wrapped up in all of that, and so they're given this commission, even though they pretty immediately fail at it. It's never revoked. God never says, oh, just kidding. I'm not going to continue to tell you to rule and reign over creation. No, they still are given that commission. The people of God from the very beginning, the first conversation God has with Abraham is I will make you a nation. I'll bless you and you will be a blessing to the nations. There's this outward orientation towards creation, and then that's fulfilled perfectly in Revelation.
In Revelation 21, the picture of human and creaturely, all of earth reconciled, redeemed, restored is not a picture of a garden again or a picture of a church. It's a picture of the new Jerusalem, a picture of a city. An image of human community where people have had to work together to create a city. So we have a picture from Genesis to Revelation of human political life. Political in this very broad sense. Not just laws or police or government, but working together to create a common life. We have that from Genesis to Revelation. Then we have colorful examples all in between of how we fail at that or how we have glimpses of succeeding at it, and there's much that we can learn from all of that in between. But I start that way with most people and give a lot more detail about the in-between part just to say, not only are there resources in scripture for us to think well about this, but I don't think we'll get anywhere good if we just jump to political issues, which is how churches who have engaged politics tend to do it. Here's a voter guide. Here's how to vote on marriage, on abortion, on economics, on foreign policy.
Scripture has a lot to say about how we think about those issues. Absolutely. But first it's just who are we? What kind of creatures are humans? How are we supposed to live in community? How does God envision us seeking the flourishing of the communities and what does flourishing look like? How would we even know if we were succeeding at it? All of that comes first, I think. And having some shared language ... And I've watched in some of these workshops where it's like, I'm sure people are voting differently. I'm sure they have different political affiliations and ideas about how we should vote. But watching them then pick up this language I've used and say, "Oh, but yeah, in Genesis it says this or Isaiah talks about worship and justice in this kind of way."
And it's like, yes, that's what we need is not throwing Bible verses back and forth at each other, just cherry-picking little references and saying, oh, here's my verse and that's how to vote. But instead saying, are we inhabiting this story together? Do we have a shared sense of what this story is impart so that we can dialogue well amongst other Christians, but then also so that we can say amongst the people of God, we have a shared story, we have shared language. Then when we dialogue with people who are not part of the people of God, we know where we're coming from and we know where we might differ from them and we can find common ground and we can see places we agree. But it's not like everything's up for grabs. It's like I know the story of the people I come from.
I know who I am and where I come from, and I'm not as threatened ... Like we were talking about before, I'm not as threatened to think who I am and where I come from is a story about America's founding or the story of one political party or the story of one politician and the movement they're starting. No, I come from these people whose story starts in Genesis and ends in Revelation. And from the rootedness of that place, I can engage in politics without feeling like anything is really threatened. This story is true regardless of how I live it out. I hope to live it out faithfully. Even if I fail by earthly standards or if I even sin and make real mistakes politically, nothing about this story is threatened, and that's a solid place to come from.
Angela Weszely:
Okay. So you're doing it. When I said, do you have any examples of how we can get our identity as a church, that's exactly what you're doing. You're bringing in this common theology that says ... Even the words you're using, we're part of the story. And your language is flowing from theology. That's actually a beautiful order. But what you're doing is getting people ... I think politically we start with what divides us. You're getting people on the same page where they can agree theologically. Is this workshop online? Can I come to it? Can we recommend it for the ProGrace community?
Kaitlyn Schiess:
There's nothing online yet, but there might be at some point. That's a good idea.
Angela Weszely:
Absolutely. And we will definitely let people know because that sounds like an amazing experience. That's what I've seen. The combination of, okay, we're all coming from the same place theologically, and we do that in the abortion issue. We value the woman and child equally. We talk about grace. That gets people much more open then to say, we're all going to make mistakes now in our language. But we're going to listen to each other. At least we're coming from this same place. So that's beautiful, Kaitlyn. I love that. That's great. I definitely want to take it when it's-
Kaitlyn Schiess:
Oh, I'm so glad.
Angela Weszely:
In this divisive election year, we are so grateful for you and the members of the ProGrace community who reject political rhetoric as the only solution, and instead are embracing an approach that mirrors how Jesus interacted with people. And so if you agree that the church should be a safe, grace-filled place that people can turn to, the first place people can turn to when facing an unintended pregnancy, we invite you to partner with us through a special matching gift campaign that will allow us to to together reach more people with this message.
So if you are able to give a new or increased gift to ProGrace by July 31st, that gift will be matched up to $5,000, and we will also send you a special limited edition ProGrace prayer kit. Thank you so much for considering partnering with us to spread this message. So let's stay on that theology because you said something that was really when we spoke before about a theological accounting of politics. Because again, that is how we think about it. Let's talk about that and then I do want to make sure before we're done to get to the whole local level that you talk about what's so great. But this theological accounting, how do we practice that?
Kaitlyn Schiess:
Yeah. Yeah. So a big part of this that I didn't say before that comes out when you look at this whole story is we have to be able to distinguish ... And this is a great distinct gift of Christian theology. So what I'm about to say, other people might get there from a different place or they might come to some shared understanding. But this is think a real distinct gift of Christian theology about politics is that we can view politics ... And these are two words I use all the time. Provisional and contingent. Provisional and contingent meaning provisional, this is not the final word. When we engage in politics, we're not bringing heaven to earth. We're hopefully bringing glimpses of the kingdom. We're hopefully being faithful, but this is provisional. This is a attempt In the meantime while we await the full redemption and restoration of all creation. And that doesn't mean it's unimportant, it just means it's provisional.
So we can fall into two ditches here on either side of the road. One is this is everything. We are bringing the kingdom to earth. Or Jesus is coming back so nothing really matters. And it's like, no, politics matters because people matter. We care about human beings made in God's image, so we care about how politics affects them, helps them flourish or keeps them from flourishing. So we say it's provisional, this is not the final word. This is not heaven on earth. It's contingent meaning we're doing the best that we can. We're making the best decisions that we can. We're open to changing our minds because this has happened over and over and over again in all of human history, especially even just in our own history in America.
We have an idea for a policy that will fix some problem or help some people. We put it in place and either we discover it doesn't actually help the people. We thought that it would help or it does, but it causes all these unintended consequences over here in another direction, and now we either have to figure out if it's worth it or if we come up with something new to fix the new problem. So it's contingent in that we can decide we were wrong, or we can just decide this is the right policy for right now, but maybe the conditions will change and suddenly a different policy is the best policy.
A good example of this is when Christians in the late 19th century were thinking about prohibition. They were identifying a problem that was a real problem. We tend to think of prohibition as just like people who weren't fun. They just didn't want people to drink alcohol because it wasn't cool. No. Often communities were looking around and saying, men are getting drunk and they're harming women and children and they're not providing for their families. Alcohol is causing real problems. Instead of saying what we could have said, which is, Hey, let's come up with something and see if it works. If it doesn't work to fix this problem, then we'll try something else or saying maybe we do need to put some restrictions on alcohol purchase and consumption, but that might not be true forever, but right now it is. Instead, what some Christians did is said, no, this has to be a universal rule for all times and places. So we're going to come up with some pretty convoluted ways of interpreting scripture to say that God has always been against alcohol and thinks that in all times and places it should not be allowed, which if your conviction is not to drink alcohol, that's wonderful. It's hard to find scripture fully supporting that.
Angela Weszely:
Theology around that. Yes.
Kaitlyn Schiess:
It's really hard. One of my seminary professors like to say, the psalmist writes so beautifully about the goodness of wine. And he's like, no one's writing that about grape juice. No one's writing that way about grape juice. It's wine. That's what it is.
Angela Weszely:
The antioxidants. Are you sure?
Kaitlyn Schiess:
But that's a good example of we were trying to address a problem, but instead of approaching it as all politics is as provisional and contingent, we said, the only way we can have a Christian engagement is to say, thus saith the Lord. God said it, I believe it. That settles it. And instead we have to be able to distinguish between there are things in God's word. There are beautiful truths that should shape our public life that we can stand on. A good example of this is scripture, especially the Old Testament, but throughout all of scripture describes nations as being judged by how they treat foreigners.
There's really no debate about that. That's a theological truth in scripture. How we then apply that to immigration policy is complicated. We might think we're doing something good and then discover actually that policy isn't working. Or we might disagree about how to balance different interests because we have to care for a diversity of different people with different interests, or we have to figure out what actually preserves the best, just situation at a border, for example. So we have to be able to say, those are two different things. They're related. Scripture should be forming our political lives. But if we're not able to distinguish between those two things, then we fall into one of those two ditches of either this is everything or it must be nothing. Instead of saying, no, we're doing hard work. We're making hard decisions. This is challenging. To figure out how scripture should inform political life in 21st century modern liberal democracies, hard. It's hard work. It's good work. We should work on it, but it is hard.
Angela Weszely:
Yeah. I actually really love you brought up prohibition because that has me thinking about ... I hadn't thought about that in a long time. If we would think, okay, it's provisional, but it's not bringing heaven to earth, like you said, could have worked for certain laws, but above that, a higher value would've been as the church, how can we minister to families? How can we meet the needs that are causing people to drink too much? That's what the church can offer. And so that's a great example of just legislating ... Drove it, underground, mafia, all the stills, everything. Where if there had been this understanding that the kingdom value of being a body that's welcoming and caring for people is highest, and we engage in this provisional political, we could have had a totally different outcome. And that's a really safe one to talk about, but I believe there are answers like that to immigration, to abortion. If we can keep that in mind.
That's so encouraging. That's great. And I do want to close, I kept promising this. It was encouraging when you talked about how this doesn't have to be national and even in prohibition, get this huge law passed. We can engage in politics where God has called us. So speak to that. Those of us who are feeling like I want some political engagement that makes a difference. What else can we do? Where else can we be involved?
Kaitlyn Schiess:
Yeah. Yeah. It's hard to push against how we have often been formed politically, and one of the ways we've been formed ... And Andy Crouch has written about this. This is where I get this. This idea that everything has to be about changing the world. We have to change the world. That's the scale that we imagine everything on. And I make a joke about this a lot, and then I'm often at Christian colleges doing it, and I have to suddenly Google the school really quick and make sure their motto isn't like creating students that change the world. Because that's just a scale that finite humans were never meant to work on. We just can't do that. And what Andy Crouch says is the real problem is if it has to be the level of change the world, if that's the goal, you can justify a lot.
If the goal is change the world, you can trample over other people, you can cut corners, you can make compromises that shouldn't be made because the scale is so huge. And this is most of our political life these days. People have probably heard probably every election that you have voted in, at least for me, this is the most important election in our lifetime. Because people want to manipulate you and say, "Hey, there's normal politics where maybe for a Christian, you turn the other cheek, you treat people like you want to be treated, you love your neighbor, but in this election, things are so important. The risk is so existential. We have to do things we wouldn't normally do." Same with the scale. If it's changing the world, we can justify doing lots of things that we shouldn't otherwise do.
Angela Weszely:
Or saving the world. It's the other thing too.
Kaitlyn Schiess:
Saving the world. Yes.
Angela Weszely:
So they use fear and it's like ... That makes so much sense. I just want to camp out there. That is helping me understand some of the stuff that makes me crazy that I see Christians say and do really does fall in line with that, and I probably-
Kaitlyn Schiess:
Yeah. We have to save the world.
Angela Weszely:
Yeah. I do that too. I've got to change the world. But you're right, nothing justifies ignoring the ways of Christ, but that's exactly what's happening. If I have to change the world, then God understands I got to ... The ends justify the means. Yeah. That's huge. Oh my gosh. Okay. Sorry to interrupt you, but it's so important. So what's the antidote to that? How do we move away from that?
Kaitlyn Schiess:
Yes. Yes. So one of the theological things that we say is actually in the kingdom of God, small faithful work matters more than the big national global stuff that you had to sell your soul to get done. This is throughout scripture, right?
Angela Weszely:
Yes.
Kaitlyn Schiess:
It's the widow with her two mites. It's the person that you're not expecting to be the savior of the city, but Rahab is the one. It's people that you don't expect doing small things that have outsize impact in God's economy. And so theologically we say that, and then practically what we say is ... Okay, actually many of us are exhausted by national politics. And our mutual friend Michael Ware will say, oh, they're not even exhausted by politics. They're exhausted by just consuming political media. You're exhausted because you've been scrolling Twitter, you've been watching cable news, and that is exhausting, and it is probably warping your soul. So maybe you do take a break from that. If people listening are like, "I'm still not convinced politics is something I should care about because I'm so exhausted," great. Don't get involved in that. Maybe for a season you just turn all of that off.
Politics, if it's so much bigger than that, then maybe if we're turning that other stuff off, maybe we're conserving energy and attention for the local. Sometimes for the very local. I have an immigrant family, a whole community of immigrant families in my neighborhood. And my ability to both build a relationship with those kids where there's a little less of a language barrier or work through the language barrier with some of the adults. If I have spent hours scrolling on Twitter, arguing with people, I don't have the energy and attention I need to focus on these people right here and build relationship with them. So that's politics. But then it's also showing up to a community organizing meeting or going to a community center or volunteering with an organization or a group that's oriented towards something that you might also vote for. But this is another way to get involved in it.
I just spent some time this last week at a pregnancy center in my area and was learning about both the clothes they're providing for babies and for moms. The fact that moms can come there and get their SNAP benefits like paperwork figured out through all of this. Just really practical work that this center is doing. And it's like I can vote for policies that I think support women and children, and I can show up to a fundraiser for this organization. I can volunteer there. I can organize people in my church to work there. So how could we conserve energy by maybe fasting a little bit from the national stuff and then orienting our attention to the local stuff? And the cool thing about the local stuff is it still can be really hard. People probably have seen clips of school board meetings that have gotten crazy in the last few years. They can get really partisan. They can get really contentious. But there are more possibilities for common ground and cooperation because you can't ...
At the national level, it's so abstracted from human needs that it does just become identity. Who I am, who I belong to. I'm a good guy, you're a bad guy. The local level, there are often things that you just can't slot into a partisan box. There's issues of zoning and where sidewalks get built and whose trash service gets handled. Or in my community recently there was ... I love using this example because almost everyone I talked to is like, "Oh yeah, I would show up for that even though I don't maybe vote the same way as everyone else who would show up for this." In my community it was discovered recently that the office that handles housing disputes in my city didn't have anyone that spoke Spanish, but most of the people dealing with housing disputes ... We have a high Hispanic population, spoke Spanish, and many of them didn't speak English. So if you're voting Democrat, you're voting Republican, if you like small government, it doesn't matter. You have so many other political opinions. But most of us agreed, Hey, these people in our community that need help navigating disputes with their landlords should have someone that speaks their language and we can work together to pressure the city into creating that. I watched people in my community, in my church who disagreed on that question, agreed that they could work together and cooperate on that.
Angela Weszely:
I love that.
Kaitlyn Schiess:
So there are possibilities out there if you just look for them.
Angela Weszely:
I love that. And I will close with this. I'm really glad you brought up our mutual friend Tracey, the pregnancy center in Durham.
Kaitlyn Schiess:
Yes. Yeah.
Angela Weszely:
She's part of our equipped learning community because, again, pregnancy centers, they're a great example. They're local and they were meant to be a local expression caring for people. But what happened is that temptation to align with the bigger national political, some of them ... I've been in this world since 2005. Would have politicians as speakers at their benefit dinner to raise money and would message politically. But what Tracey's doing, to your point, she's not spending her energy on that. That's very innovative and probably took her a lot of time to figure out how they could use their SNAP benefits. But that's going to help women have hope for their future, hope that they could possibly continue the pregnancy. Where the temptation has been to raise money because the other piece of this and do other things, go the political route, she has focused her energy on meeting the needs of women in her community, which means she's going to have better partnerships with people that might be on a different side politically than she is in the community.
Because that's quite honestly ... We'll end with this. That's a criticism of Christians is we may say we care politically, but in the abortion issue, we don't care for what the woman's going through or we don't care for the child after they come into this world. And so Tracey is saying, no, we do care. That's a kingdom response. I just think that's a beautiful example, but it does take us fasting and maybe stepping back and saying, where have we for expediency or to think about changing the world, where have we let political come into places that it's actually keeping us from serving our community? And Tracey is a great example of turning that around, so I'm glad you brought that up. Thank you. And that should be a model for churches. There's pregnancy centers in communities all over the country that with more support from churches and grassroots could provide more services like that that would be beneficial. But it does take a stepping away, I think, from the political rhetoric.
Kaitlyn Schiess:
Yeah. But there's hope.
Angela Weszely:
Absolutely. Tracey's a great example. And I do see there's just a movement ... So again, what did you say? You said earlier, someone's not the biggest, but they get more airtime. You were talking about something else, and I think that's part of this issue. The people on the farthest edges seem to get more airtime. But I find ... I don't know what you find. Most Christians are wrestling and we want what you've been talking about to be united as a kingdom community. So that does give me hope.
Kaitlyn Schiess:
Yeah. There are other people out there.
Angela Weszely:
Exactly. We want to get you much more airtime. So yes, we will link your books. We'll be waiting for your workshop to come online. Thank you so much. This has been so inspiring to me, and I know will be helpful to our community as well.
Kaitlyn Schiess:
Absolutely. Thank you for having me.
Angela Weszely:
Thank you so much for joining me today. I hope you've been inspired to see Jesus and to be part of a community where you feel at home. Join our email subscriber list to receive updates on how together we can change the Christian response to abortion. The only way we'll do that is through God's grace, which is beyond measure. I am so grateful for that. And so until next time, I am Angela Weszely on the grace journey with you. ProGrace on Abortion: Real Talk, No Politics is a production of ProGrace International.
