Note: Can I Say This at Church is produced for audio listening. If able, I strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which has inflection, emotion, sarcasm where applicable, and emphasis for points that may not come across well in written word. This transcript is generated using a combination of my ears and software, and may contain errors. Please check the episode for clarity before quoting in print.
Serene 0:00
That's a great question. And that's a profoundly theological question and it is probably the most important question that anyone can ever ask about faith. I believe and find this in Calvin find it in the faith I grew up in, that the love of God is simply the truth about all of our lives. And that love for each person into the earth is just a given. It is the truth. And there's nothing that we can do to throw that love of God away. Because it's something God gives to us and it's not something we even have to receive in order for it to be true. Now sin comes secondly, in that sin describes all the different ways in which we rebel against God and rebel against, for me, the love the orientation towards human flourishing that we were destined towards. That's sin, but the fact that we sin doesn't cause God to stop loving us. That is the original grace! Which doesn't downplay the magnitude and horror of sin but says that back behind sin is a stable, unceasing rock hard truth and that is God is love and loves us.
Seth Price 1:26
Hello friends! Welcome to the show I'm really excited about this one. Normally I wait a month before I come back to record this little monologue, but man I just got off of the phone with with Reverend Dr. Serene Jones, and I can't stress enough how much I really liked the conversation and her book, Call it Grace. I don't know what I expected, but I know I've been blown away and I've come back to different For some of it off and on, but the the stories are hauntingly true. And I use those words with intention. It's so rare to have someone leave such personal stories on a page in such a public way. And then to do the work of God and theology through those stories, to talk so deeply about how personal experience impacts the way that we live out faith. We touch on racism. We touch on bigotry. And so without any further delay, I'd like to just get into the conversation with a Reverend, Dr. Serene Jones.
Seth Price 2:50
Reverend Dr. Serene Jones, I'm excited to welcome you to the show. I was also very excited. Surprised actually when I received a copy of your book Called it Grace, I had no idea what to expect. But that evening, I read, I think, just the foreword. And then I emailed back now the young lady that said, Hey, reach out to me. And I was like, “Yes. As soon as I'm done, can we please have a talk about this”? And so I'm excited to welcome you to the show.
Serene 3:16
Well, I'm so glad to be in conversation with you. And thanks for reading the book.
Seth Price 3:20
Yeah, well, thanks for writing it. So I have to think much like myself, there will be just people that are unfamiliar with with you. And so I wanted to set some context for the conversation that we're about to have. What would you say is serene Jones in a nutshell? Like what are some of the things in your life from your upbringing, possibly that helped inform the type of person the type of Christian the type of administrator at your school that you are today? What are some of those high points just to give a little background for you?
Serene 3:52
Okay, well, I'm presently president of Union Theological Seminary in the city of New York, which has the reputation of being the pre eminent liberal seminary. It's now an interfaith, increasingly interfaith, and people of wide diversity come here, also because we believe that faith and social justice are connected in profound ways. And that has been the story of my life. I grew up in Oklahoma, on the Christian Church Disciples of Christ, which in New York City no one's ever heard of, but for me, it was pivotal in my formation.
My father, Joe Jones, was himself a theologian by training and an administrator of seminaries and a social activist from the time I can remember. So in the book, I relate how my own understanding of the civil rights movement, my own, growing awareness of racism and white supremacy in the US, was always for me, tied to My faith and the call to struggle against injustice. It takes me through the my family's very intimate connection to the bombing of the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City and in the execution of Timothy McVeigh and it also covers just my midlife crisis of divorce and children and life and death in America today.
Seth Price 5:29
Right a minute ago before I did the you know, the intro there we were talking about how much I enjoyed this reading even the little intro to your book and where you had me, Serene, was you talk about a Woody Guthrie song, this land is your land this land is my land. And honestly, I'm finding that a lot of the songs that I grew up learning in grade school, they get progressively awful.
(laughter from Serene)
And so yeah, that's just the best way I can say that sentence just progressively awful even the stories behind them and you tell a lot of those stories here. But I asked just a smattering of people, just random people here in Central Virginia, what they knew of that song, none of them knew any of it. And most of them just thought it was kind of a glorified jingle. But you talked a bit about, you know, justice and racism and whatnot. I wonder if just for some context for some of the inherented we don't know about kind of topics, just kind of the story behind that song because I didn't know any of that. And that's when I set it down. I was like, “Oh, this, this is gonna be a different kind of book than I thought it was gonna be.”
Serene 6:34
Yeah, well, so I chose to talk about that song because I grew up singing it in church camp in Oklahoma, the verses we're all familiar with, and also, Woody Guthrie and his family grew up next door to my grandfather's family in the small town of Okehma, Oklahoma. So we had shared roots. And I also grew up singing, you know, this land is your land. In singing it with great cheer and happiness. But then one night sitting around the campfire with a bunch of church kids from this progressive church, the singer went on to sing the other two verses that we never hear.
And those verses talk about seeing a sign walking across America called “no trespassing.” And on the other side of that sign was nothing. And then when he got there says “that other side was made for you and me”. And then he says,
and I saw my people standing in the shadow of the steeple, in the hunger lines waiting for food, and I had to ask myself, is this land made for you and me?
And what was so striking to me even at age 11 why hadn't I heard those verses? Why hadn't I heard that bad parts and all of my life has been a process as a person of faith committed to social justice, to not lop off the hard parts of our own histories in our families, but also the hard parts of our American history. The pain and the suffering, the outright cruelty, the history of genocide and chattel slavery, and that's just scratching the surface of the stories about who we are that we don't want to deal with.
Seth Price 8:37
I remember, this came up recently, it was a song I think, last year, maybe the year before last with the whole Colin Kaepernick thing. Everybody was talking about, you know, maybe Francis Scott Key and just different verses to different songs and all these different nursery rhymes. It seemed like everything came up at the same time, and I was amazed at how much had either been changed because it was overtly racist and it was somehow okay. And had been sanitized for today's ears, even if even so many things is and I hadn't thought about it until a few weeks ago. My youngest is three and she came home and said, you know, we sit crisscross applesauce. And I was like, What are you talking about? And I grew up calling it Indian style, which now is wholly inappropriate. And so it makes sense. But I don't even know when that change happened. But I think there's so much there that we don't talk about anywhere, especially not in our families. But I don't know why, because I don't know who would have taught me. Does that make sense?
Serene 9:33
Yes.
Seth Price 9:35
Is that the onus of the Church, of school, of parents? Where do you see that?
Serene 9:38
Well, I mean, I was fortunate in my own family that I had parents that when they made these discoveries themselves, wanted to talk about it. And that doesn't mean that there weren’t things that they themselves were unaware of that they didn't teach me. But I think having family systems that are open to admissions of the gross failures of families and the harshness of family life are much more capable and resilient when it comes to dealing with the changes as a whole culture, our capacity to see the injustices in our culture become more clear. And obviously churches should be a place where you where you learn this. And I was also fortunate that I'm not one of the zillions of people who has a horrible church story to tell. I have good church stories to tell. And the church formed to me in profound ways. And that's where I learned about so many of the lies was in church. I didn't learn the lies in church, I learned about the fact they were lies in church. And in a lot of places churches are the places that teach the lies.
Seth Price 10:53
I want to build off of that. So I shared this quote from your book a few weeks and maybe we could go on social media and It really resonated with a lot of people. And so you said something we so often. And you say I later came to realize, and that's after the backdrop of some of what you just said,
you find the version of theology that our life needs.
And if theology is just you and I talking about God that really made me question, the God that I talked about and see, and the God that we worship just last week on Easter. But also it makes me question the, I guess, rightness is a wrong word, but of people that disagree with what God is and what God stands for. And I find it hard to balance truth with that quote, I guess, as a subtext, does that make sense? So I'm curious how you would handle that because both sides can use it if I want to use you know, you tell a story of asking students to write down after the Bush/Gore election, who what Jesus they brought, you know, those voters who worship and what Jesus they brought to class and whatnot. How do we approach God that way does that make sense?
Serene 12:01
Yeah, no, that's a great question. In writing that I, that we find the God our lives need. I think that all the time, everyone is in trying to figure out who God is and trying to relate to God and feel deeply connected, is going to automatically bring their own challenges, aches, and pains, worries, sufferings, and joys to that questioning. So, in a way, it's impossible for us to escape our own needs, and our own fears, and our own yearnings, when we come to the question of who God is in relation to our life.
That said, I also think that the faith that I grew up with has built into the faith itself this constant call to ask questions about how your own biases are getting in the way of the truth; and how your own life circumstances may be stopping your ability to actually figure out what it means to love in the world. So it's both existentially necessary that we bring ourselves to God and it's also, I think necessary for a healthy faith, to always be questioning those things that we bring to God and how they can distort the story detail.
Seth Price 13:33
So I get this question a lot, as people listening often are going through, I don't like the I find “deconstruction” a little bit violent of a metaphor for faith. But as they're going through, I guess, a crisis of faith. They'll often ask me by email or you know, other other ways, you know, “how do I know when I've asked enough questions? How do I know when I'm at a place that I can healthily look at things and be more whole?”
What would you say to that?
Serene 13:59
Well, if the questions that one is struggling with are in service of becoming whole yourself and also in service of a realization that your own wholeness depends upon the wholeness of the world and seeking to better love and connect with those around you and those suffering. I don't think there's ever too many questions to ask. Questions that are tied to how am I going to make more money, or how am I going to get back at my sister in law, or, you know, are we going to win the football game Friday night? No, those are not those are not worthy questions. But questions about, you know, am I loved and valued despite the history of the harms I may have perpetrated on others? And that's a valid question. And it's worth asking, and it's worth searching for an answer to. And we all ask those questions.
Seth Price 14:56
That's how you know that you're from the plains because inherently when you say football, most people think NFL or college. But then you quickly pivoted right back to Friday night, which is near and dear to my hearts high school football is, is probably the be all end all from the part of the country that we're from. (laughter from both)
I mean, it's it's popular here, you know, in the East Coast, but by no means is it the religion is probably a good metaphor for where I'm from. I mean, we're on the phone, but I wish you could have seen the smile when you said Friday because it instantly just brought back all of these memories.
I want to be honest I was a some many points of Calvinists, all the way through just from the upbringing of my parents. And then I went to Liberty and I stayed that way. And I no longer attest to that view of God. But I also had never read the the Institute book that you referenced that you got from your grandmother. And the way that you talk about John Calvin is not the way that I quote unquote, when I said that I was a “Calvinist”, treated people in any way, shape or form.
And so I'd like to kind of define that there. The way that you talk about Calvin was wholly foreign to me, but also entirely beautiful, because I always view it from the lens of the way you know, Jonathan Edwards style preacher would preach, you know that you're just so depraved, Serene. You just don't even understand how wretched you are! Which is not the God that I worship. But that's not the way that it seems like, at least not what you infer that, Calvin really espoused. Am I wrong in that because I'll be honest, I'm entirely ignorant, mostly because of my disgust as I graduated college with the inevitable outcomes to that way of thinking?
Serene 16:43
Yes, no. I mean, there are many ways of interpreting Calvin that have come down to the ages to us. My own reading of Calvin was really influenced by…I had just returned from two years of living in India and then in the Philippines. Philippines was in the middle of a civil war in India confronted enormous poverty. And I picked up The Institutes to read it back in seminary in New Haven. And I began to read this as a book that a pastor was writing to people who are oppressed and were hanging on for dear life, and needed a good word and needed strength to persevere through the oppression they were facing. And John Calvin actually says that in the introduction to The Institutes, that this is a book that he's writing for his people who are being persecuted.
What happens 100 years later with Calvin is that this book that was written to give strength to the broken is flipped over and turned into a set of doctrines that are used to justify persecution and oppression. And that's basically the history of Calvinism. And so what I wanted to do was get back underneath that and look at its original context and see why the pastoral Calvin is the Calvin that we should listen to. The one who's proclaiming the love of God that is, you know, unwavering in love, particularly for those who suffer.
Seth Price 18:27
You reference I think it's chapter three, chapter four, original sin, which is something I've been wrestling with a lot lately, particularly because I've been reading a lot of Eastern Orthodox theologians, because I wanted to try to broaden my horizon. So I've been reading a lot on original sin and original blessing. But you said something that caught me and you talk about the influence of original sin. And I think it's in the portion of your book where you talk about rowing the boat, for your grandfather, and I think his politician friend, who's African American, if I'm remembering correctly? And then just the inherent, you know, the filter that your grandfather has. But then somehow, you know, after the fact is as inappropriate jokes are told at the dinner table, and I've heard my share with those as well, that you know this wretchedness has been inherited somehow down through an original sin. But then you say,
Grace is more original than sin.
And so I'd like to focus on that part. Because I feel like everybody is really good about talking about missing the mark and sin. But we're not all that good about talking about grace. And so what do you mean when you say “grace is more original than sin”?
Serene 19:34
Oh, that's a great question. And that's a profoundly theological question and is probably the most important question anyone can ever ask about faith. That I believe and find this in Calvin find it in the faith I grew up in, that the love of God is simply the truth about all of our lives. And that love for each person and through the Earth is just a given. It is the truth. And there's nothing that we can do to throw that love of God away. Because it's something God gives to us and it's not something we even have to receive in order for it to be true.
Seth Price 20:17
Yeah.
Serene 20:18
Now sin comes secondly in that sin describes all the different ways in which we rebel against God and rebel against, for me, the love-the orientation towards human flourishing that we were destined towards. That's sin. But the fact that we sin doesn't cause God to stop loving us—that is the original grace. Which doesn't downplay the magnitude and horror of sin, but says that back behind sin is an unstable, unceasing walk hard truth and that is God's love.
Seth Price 21:36
As I was reading, I was highlighting Serene, just different stories that you tell about your life and your upbringing and so many of them are so deeply personal and heartbroken, or heartbreaking. And it made me wonder if I would be able to write something so deeply personal and like pull back layers of myself that I would protect maybe only for a close family. And so I have no idea how you did that. But I found myself punting like alright, I don't know how I can talk about this, and it not be too emotional and then punting again and then punting again. But I want to zero in on a few specific stories that really were deeply impactful to me.
You talk in a chapter on Barth and in the Bell Tower, I think is what it is. And you talk about the story that if you're going to a birthday party, at a pool and the pool is closed, and then you have to go to a different pool. And that is basically the pool of African American Jews. And what surprises me so much of your story, Serene is the lack of self filtering. You know, that you just allow things to be honest. And honestly, I was surprised.
But I wonder if you could kind of go through that story a bit and kind of how that changed your mentality or at least helped you come through some self realization.
Serene 22:45
Yeah. So I was so excited about that birthday party. And the car was filled with all of the quite neighborhood girls in from the white suburb that we lived in at the time in Richardson, Texas. And when we got to the pool, where we were going to have the party was closed. And so my father says, Well, okay, we're going to go to the pool and the other part of town when every girl in the car knew that that was the pool for African Americans swim. And my father hears this voice come out of the backseat, saying, I don't want to swim with black people. And he gets out of the car and asks “who said that awful thing”? And I have to raise my hand, because it came from my mouth.
And I write about both how angry I was at my father for ruining my party because I knew every little girl in that backseat was thinking the same thing I was, but I also felt so ashamed that something had come out of my mouth that against everything my parents did for. And my parents had both been so active, and were at the moment, so active in the civil rights movement in Dallas. And what I used that as an occasion for is reflecting on the fact that the racism, and the white supremacy, that runs through our culture is so deep that you can have the most progressive parents and the most progressive teachers in the world but all of that racism is still going to seep into you and it seeped into my little girl body. And I had all sorts of unconscious biases that I picked up from the culture that were then coming out of my mouth.
My father in order to really impress upon me the seriousness of the wickedness of what I had said gave me the choice of going back home to the house with all our friends and participating in my own birthday party. And then never having another birthday party again, or not participating in the party and having future birthday parties. I chose to go back and have a party with my friends. It was a really heavy duty punishment to lay upon a child who, at some levels, is just espousing what everyone else thought. But at the same time, it really got through the message, the moral message, about the seriousness of white supremacy and racism.
Of course, my wonderful father the next morning, I woke up and he began to plan next year's birthday party with me. So the punishment didn't hold but it sure came across and I honestly think and I say this throughout the book, that until white people in America are able to admit and talk about the white supremacy and racism that runs through all of our families. And that cannot help but embed itself in our unconscious mind until we're able to talk about that. We're not going to be able to get beyond it. And in this book, that's why I tried to talk about growing up in Oklahoma and the white supremacy that was everywhere. I also tell a terrible story about my realization that a lynching of a young woman in 1911 took place in the small town of Okehma, where most of the town was comprised of my family, and that it's highly unlikely that they were not a part of that. And that's something as a white person I have to come to grips with. That racial violence isn't something It's such in the far distant past. It's something that's in my family.
Seth Price 27:04
When I give people critiques like that, because I try to, honestly, I'll ask you this both as a parent and then just as a human. So when I catch my kids saying things I really struggle with how to address it, because it is shameful. But I also wonder what I've done as a parent, to make it somehow be okay to think that? So that's one question, how is a parent to even do that without belittling, you know, my kids, but also stressing the importance? Because I don't want to make them, I do want to make them fearful, but I want to make them fearful of the status quo, not fearful of voicing their opinions and filtering themselves. But then I'll also get from adults. “Yeah, but Serene, those were your ancestors. Like you didn't do that. And so you can't held any blame”. “You know, I have “black friends” or I have quote unquote, this or I didn't own any slaves, or I didn't do this or do that”. Which is the most common response that I get from people when I engage in conversations on race or white supremacy. So how do I how would I do either one of those with good practices?
Serene 28:15
Mm hmm.
Well, I think that with regard to the first in terms of parenting, I've tried to parent my own daughter in such a way that I don't shame her but I'm constantly trying to educate her. And never hesitating to point out when she is expressing the dominant cultures, views around race and it's particularly really hard to have your own daughter come home and say things that are totally sexist about women. You know, how and how do you sort of point another way forward? And, you know, shame is a very complicated dynamic and Sometimes it can be terribly destructive. But sometimes I think that when it comes to these horrendous sins of our past we need to feel a little more shame. Because it is shameful.
Now with respect to like the present day and saying to people who would respond to my story, “well, Serene, you're not, you know, you, you haven't done all those things that your grandfather's family probably did”. But the fact of the matter is that I have made my way forward in life taking advantage of, and oftentimes not even aware of how much I'm taking advantage of, my white privilege. That I was able…I don't even know what happened to Laura Nelson's family. She left a baby daughter by the steps of the bridge before she was lynched. I don't know the story of that daughter, but I know my story. And my story was one in which I had all the confidence in the world that it took to go to college and then to go to graduate school and get a PhD. I had parents and grandparents who were able to economically help me do that and stepped into the Presidency of Union. Thinking that that was a place that I belonged, and that I could do this. And that legacy of Jim Crow and chattel slavery has, as we can look around the country and see, devastated the opportunities for African Americans to have a history like mine. And in that sense, I'm still bear that legacy in my own successes.
Seth Price 30:56
The chapter that you talk about going to India you talk about Indian Liberation Theology, which is the first time I've ever heard those three words put together. I talk a lot. I hear a lot about black liberation theology. And then I've also heard a lot about, you know, the liberation theology of, you know, Latin America. So how does that differ Indian liberation theology than the other or does it?
Serene 31:21
Yeah, well, so in India, I was studying at a small seminary, Tamil Nadu Theological Seminary in Madurai, and it was really the birthplace of what's called Dalit liberation theology. And Dalit is the word for servant. It's now the word that people use to refer to that whole group of people that Gandhi called “The Untouchables”. Those who are outside of the caste system because they are considered so impure. And so low in terms of their human status that they're made to be the street cleaners, the sewage cleaners, they are the outcast of India's caste system.
And what was so exciting about the seminary is that most of the students there and the professors were Dalits. And they were starting to push back against this caste system, and to say, No, this is wrong, these people are valuable. Because what's so interesting is that, you know, Gandhi himself, pushed back against British imperialism, and he did mobilize many Untouchables. But even Gandhi himself, did not question the caste system, and that the Dalit community now is pushing back on it is in an Indian context is very radical. And it's also very dangerous.
Seth Price 33:04
So how is that? And this may be, maybe you don't know, how is that changing faith there, but I don't necessarily mean face Christian faith, just overall faith? Because, you know, faith in politics and faith in policies and everything is intertwined regardless of whether or not you think that they are. They always are, is it changing India at all? Is it making it better is making it worse?
Serene 33:29
Well, right now, the leadership of India is very pro the status quo and traditionalist with respect to the caste system. So it's very hard in India today to be Christian or Muslim or to be Dalit, or Buddhist. And so you find these communities working together to push back against that caste system because they all fall outside of it. And to say no for India to be a true democracy, we cannot have a caste system. And that caste system in India is deep. It goes back thousands and thousands of years.
Seth Price 34:13
Well, of course, yeah, I mean, we don't have a caste system. But that's like when people say, you know, in America that the politicians that have term limits are politicians to do this, or do this or do this. But why would they? Why would they vote themselves into less power? Why would they do that, I don’t think that I would? I would like to think that I would. But I'm also honest enough to know, I don't know that I would.
Serene 34:36
Well, I think in India, it's very interesting that you find more and more people who are Hindu in their origins and upbringing, and even high caste Hindus who are rejecting that view of what it means to be Hindu because of the pressures that had been brought by all of these marginal groups that are saying “wait the system is wrong”. So it's even changing Hinduism itself.
Seth Price 35:01
You referenced the Timothy McVeigh bombing in Oklahoma. And when I read that visions of you know Christ Church or even just the Sri Lanka Eastern politics, you know so many people, just but that happens every week if people just look for it like it's, it's everywhere, and you talk about hatred, and then you basically write in a, you know, a message or a sermon or a speech that you would given that I honestly, if someone came into my church and blown something up, like I would feel the same way you would. Honestly, I would probably feel that way if someone talk poorly about my child to my face or the so there's a massive tension between anger and hate, and love and compassion. And the line that you write that struck me the most. And I've thought on it for weeks now. Is is after you've had your speech, you say
my feet took me to my Pew and my body sat down, and I've almost become an atheist, I thought for a moment. And then the years to come, I would realize the fine line between the two atheism and divine vision, nothingness and the holy.
And so I want to know if you can break that apart again, just how those four things interplay, atheism and divine vision and nothingness in the holy. And I asked that because I feel like a lot of people as they questioned God, they eventually just pull the ripcord and fall into atheism because they don't know where to go. They just they hit a roadblock and they just I can't do this anymore. I'm so frustrated and I'm so mad and I'm just not interested in investing the emotional capital into working through this anymore.
Serene 36:35
Yeah.
So in the in that sermon that I preached, you know, I think, as most people expect with a sermon, they want a nice ending to it. And this was just weeks after the bombings, in which I lost friends, in which my brother in law was injured. And the state of horror and confusion and grief inside me was so powerful. And in my questions about God, you know how can you ask these questions, even if you know they're stupid questions because you don't think God acts this way. But you ask yourself anyway, how could God allow this? You know, where is there any meaning or hope in this? Those things are so devastating your whole internal world just collapses. And what I wanted to do in that sermon was just be honest with everybody and say this is what it's like, everything collapses inside of you. And if you're too quick, to try to fix it all up and make it look pretty and bring in God as if God is a nice, quaint, little answer to all of our suffering then your faith isn't worth anything. But stepping into that place of utter desolation is scary. And it's in one of those moments that you seriously question everything you thought you believed. But if you're not brave enough if you're not serious enough to step into that place of utter doubt, then the faith that you have is not strong enough to hold you. Yeah. And I had the courage to step there.
And it was just in the experience for me in that moment that I go on to write is when I sat down in my pew the woman next to me to softly put her hand on my leg to call me down because I was shaking so much. And it was within that minute, in that touch, that I found grace.
Seth Price 38:38
And I'd argue that's what the church was right there, you know, a safe place to be transparent and raw, and then that same safe place to hold you. You know, to reference a story with your daughter, you know, she, I forget what the coins I'm a banker by trade and so I like that story, but you know, a safe place to hold someone.
We're coming close to the end of our time I could I could probably talk to you for hours. I really liked that so many different parts of your book. But it's not, actually this is the first time in almost two years of doing this, that I've ever spoken to someone that is basically a spearhead of a force that trains pastors and those with a theological mindset bent for the future. And so, where should Christians seminaries be heading? Like what do we do if you look at or you know, as Union or other seminaries, you know, here in Virginia Baptist Theological Seminary, literally, I think shuttered its doors in February. So where does the church need to be training their leaders to take it as you see it right now?
Serene 39:47
Oh, that's such a wonderful question. And it and it is the question of the day for theological education. And what I believe is that we're in the midst right now of another reformation of the magnitude of the one that happened 500 years ago; when everything is being turned upside down when the truth is that we held as you know, invaluable are now being questioned. And that's also when I go back to John Calvin. John Calvin didn't think that he was breaking from the Catholic Church. But he did know that his criticisms were searing and serious. And he was dealing with a whole population of people who no longer believed. And that's the same kind of moment we're in. And it's a moment of enormous crisis, but it's also in a moment in which there's the capacity for really mind shattering creativity.
And I think in so far as our seminaries are able to still teach the students the traditions and the stories that had been so crucial to the faith for centuries. But in teaching these stories to allow students to ask the question, “well, what did they mean to us today?” And the answers that were coming up with and I think our children and our children's children will come up with a very different than the answers that we found with respect to how we understand God. And at Union, where I am that is also opening our doors, not only to Christian students, but to Buddhist and Muslim students, and to the many many unaffiliated students who come here who don't come out of a tradition but out of a spiritual yearning. Because what the future holds for us is, if we make it, we're going to have to make it all together. And that conversation needs to be between all of us together.
Seth Price 41:41
I said that was the last question but I have one more question after that. And so if I hear that and I agree wholeheartedly. How do I do that at the dinner table? Because that conversation is gonna come home. So how do I do it and not be aggressive? Or if there's a parent listening, going? Yeah, we need to talk about this. How Do I do this with my child or with my pastor or with the deacon, and not be aggressive? Because I know one thing when people get angry you just can't think correctly anymore, that that's just not the way the brain works. So how do we do it well?
Serene 42:16
Well, for me, the most powerful way to talk about it is just what is the biggest truth that Jesus came to speak? And what is the biggest truth about the God of Jesus, and that is this message of love. And if you can get people talking about what they think love means, and what kind of life Jesus calls us to live, it shifts the dynamics from right and wrong and pronouncements to talking about a story of a man who healed people and proclaimed liberation. And that's the kind of space where, you know, people who have read Scripture and think about Jesus can talk about it. I mean, Jesus is amazing, and an incredible starting point for these discussions. So you're not going to find anything where Jesus is talking about being anti-LGBTQ. I mean, it's just not there. Nothing about choice. Nothing about women's bodies and their rights, you know, so it opens up space.
Seth Price 43:19
Oddly enough. I almost had one of those arguments today with a friend of mine that was writing me something about the Boy Scouts. And there's a big thing in the news about this. And he's like, Yeah, what's because of all the, you know, they decided to let there be homosexual scout masters. And I almost said something and then I deleted it. And then I almost said something else. And then I deleted it. I thought about calling him and then I hung it up. Because I'm still too angry because there's so much retconning and confirmation bias that I just I'm still struggling. I know what I want to say. I have no idea how to say it. I know it's gonna start with these cases go back to 1944 so your whole premise is unfounded.
But either way that is entirely off topic. Thank you so, so much for coming on. It was a privilege to be able to read your book. And I think the world has a better place for it. So where would people go? I've given away a handful of copies already have recommended it to I don't know how many people because it's honest, in a world full of books that say the same thing. Yours says different things in an entirely honest way. And I really appreciate that.
So where would you point people to…to either engage with you, maybe to learn more about the work that you're doing a union? The book is available everywhere that you can buy books, and links for that will be you know, as people go back to the show notes in the episode, but where would you send them to engage a bit with you?
Serene 44:47
Um, well, the webpage at Union has a lot about all the things that we're doing, as well as ongoing conversations with me I have a Twitter account and I am just one voice amongst many people who are struggling and trying to find answers to these questions, so that's where I would point them. And to you, your show!
Seth Price 45:12
Well, thanks. Yeah, I would second all of that…Robert's Rules, I’ll third it, or whatever it's called all of that so well thank you again I've really enjoyed the conversation.
Serene 45:24
Yes thank you so much and have a great day you as well.
Seth Price 45:40
I'd like to end with reading a quote from Serene’s book. It's a quote of a quote. And so she references Howard Thurman often off and on throughout the book, and how deeply impactful his and other words like his work on her life. And there's a quote towards the end, on forgiving that really speaks to me. So I'd like to share that with you. He says,
There is in every one of us an inward sea. In that sea there is an island; and on that island there is a temple. In that temple there is an altar; and on that altar burns a flame. Each one of us, whether we bow our knee at an altar external to ourselves or not, is committed to the journey that will lead him to the exploration of his inward sea, to locate his inward island, to find the temple, and to meet, at the altar in that temple, the God of his life.
And what a better picture than that, if we'll do the work, that hard work of wrestling with who we really are, which is really beloved, honoring that and realizing that everyone else is also beloved. Man, I can't imagine what that would do, to the way that we love to the way that we're called to love others to love ourselves, I can't imagine what that would do to the way that we blame others. So many evils of the world through which is realized what we actually are. I hope you’ve enjoyed the conversation.
Very special thank you to each and every supporter of the show, be that being sharing an episode on social media, or specifically, huge thank you to the to the patrons that really make the show work. You have no idea how thankful I am for each and every single one of you. And if you haven't done that, and you've been thinking about it, consider it. It's one of my favorite communities. It's one of the favorite things that I do and I'm ever thankful because honestly, without it, there would just be no way to do this show.
So the music from today was recommended to me by a friend who said this guy sings in a way that I just want to really want to Bob my head too. And I agree. And so you'll you heard the music today from Jervis Campbell. You'll find Links to his music in the show notes and the tracks from today. You will find on the Can I Say This At Church Spotify playlist. I cannot wait to talk to each and every single one of you next week.
Be blessed