Speaker 1: And we are back with another edition of the Federalist
Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kittle, Senior Elections correspondent at the
Federalist and your experience Shirpa on today's quest for Knowledge.
As always, you can email the show at radio at
the Federalist dot com, follow us on x at FDR LST.
Make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcast, and
of course to the premium version of our website as well.
Our guest today is doctor Christina Crenshaw, Assistant professor at
Arizona Christian University. She serves as a fellow as well
at the university's Cultural Research Center. She's also author of
the fascinating new book Redeeming Justice, Reclaiming God's vision for
doing good in the world. It is out in the
world right now wherever you find your books. Christina, thank
you so much for joining us in this edition of
the Federalist Radio Hour.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you for having me honored to be here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you bet. This is a great concept. It is
so important these days. Over the last several years in
this country, there has been i think a battle for
the soul of this country and for individuals in this country,
and it is a battle between the ephemeral, the political,
and the spiritual and the biblical, and that is exactly
what your book is about. It delves into what seemed
like a catch phrase a few years back. It's a
term that's been around and steeped in Marxism. It's social justice.
And this book is really all about the difference between
social justice and its aims, its motives, and biblical justice
and the road to eternity. Give us a sense of
the difference that you see between the two.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you know, I think just to kind of
set up for your listeners, you know, the heart behind
why I wrote this book, Like most of us, twenty
twenty was so eye opening, and I think particularly if
you were in church spaces, which I am. You know,
I was at a Christian university, heavily involved in the church,
and I started to realize, oh wow, even within the church,
we don't have the kind of language and the kind
of impetus for doing social justice work that is in
any way distinguishable from those who are doing it from
a humanistic perspective those who are doing it from secular reasons.
And then, as you mentioned, I started to notice too,
we don't really have language around this politically, we don't
have language around this spiritually, and so that began to
trouble me, particularly because I would see as a college
professor my students they were motivated by the wrong reasons,
and the wrong reasons lead to the wrong outcomes. So
I went on this journey really twenty twenty twenty twenty one.
I was particularly rattled by twenty twenty one when the
Biden administration issued an executive order overturning title nine. Now
I'm not too shocked by secular people doing secular things,
or atheist people doing atheist things, but the way that
I saw fellow Christians cheer for something that was not biological,
something that was not biblical, was disturbing to me. So
that was really like the impetus behind this book. And
as I started to study the difference between social justice
from a humanist Marxist perspective and biblical justice from an
Old Testment to New Testament framework for why we would
engage social work, why we would do good in the world,
and God's heart for the differences between the two. So
different motivations and different outcomes. But as you noted that
the real distinguishing difference between social justice and biblical justice.
And social justice is predicated on Marxist humanist, progressive relative ideology,
and biblical justice is rooted in a biblical scriptural interpretation
of what it means to do justice, to do mercy,
to do good.
Speaker 1: It seems to me, yeah, it seems to me that
social justice as it was applied during the Black Lives
Matter movement and the LGBTQ movement, as you mentioned, the
transgender area, all of those sorts of things, there is
this eventual goal of power, that is political power. That's
what it's all about. The difference, to me seems pretty
clear when you're talking about christ centered biblical justice. But
we have all of these, you know, secular visions of
the world and what doing good is supposed to be about.
I think of a candidate, and I wanted to get
your sense of this because in Texas you have this,
you know, very intense senate race going on. The primaries
are coming up, and I think you know where I'm
going with this. But there is a candidate named James
Talerico who has become you know, the it guy for
the left social justice movement, and he, you know, he
is apparently attempting to be a pastor. He's received a
shout out from Barack Obama and charmed, this is not
my writing, by the way, I believe this is Mother
Jones magazine. And you know, yes, right there exactly. They're
faughting over this guy. He's charmed everyone from Ezra Kline
to you know, you name the liberal h Stephen Colbert
for instance. So he he is really getting a lot
of attention because he is saying, hey, uh, you know,
you don't have to practice your faith through the lens
of what he likes to call, you know, uh nationalism
or the Christian right, Christian nationalism, that sort of thing.
Talk about that in relation to your book, if you
don't mind about how the left is now trying to
capitalize on what is really fundamental to this country, and
that is the Christian faith.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, James tallerco is a great example of where
the left has co opted much of what is biblical
and used it for their own agenda. And what bothers
me most about the Christian nationalism accusation is the very
actions that the left accuses the right of doing. When
they call something Christian nationalism, they do it as well.
They just won't own the label So, for example, if
I had a dollar for every time I heard the
left say, just love your neighbor and get vaccinated, Just
love your neighbor and wear a masks, just love your
neighbor and open the borders. And the very idea of
just love your neighbors again is predicated on the idea
of Jesus telling us to love our neighbors, love our enemies.
But this so, first and foremost, the left is using
Christian language for their own power and agenda, and that
is fundamentally at its core what they're calling Christian nationalism.
So when the right advocates to end abortion or to
put severe restrictions on when abortion is allowed, we are
called Christian nationalists. But when the left wants to evoke
a biblical principle for their agenda, suddenly it's not Christian nationalism.
So the hypocrisy is comical and dizzy. So just to
address the Christian nationalism accusation, I wish both sides would
just come to terms with we are doing our best
to integrate our faith in the public square, and it
is tricky and it is hard, and that we would
just take the Christian nationalism accusation off the table. Because
it's circular, like critical theories often are, and it's not
helpful or productive. I think that what most people want
to claim on the left when they say Christian nationalism
is that the right wants a theocracy, but we don't.
No one wants a theocracy. So I think that's what
they think that they are claiming when they claim Christian nationalism,
because in reality, if it's faith integration, they're attempting to
do it too, to actually address some of the holes
in their argument, the flaws. I think it comes back
to just having a robust apologetics around whatever issue is
on the table and hermanuticts. So, for example, James Tallerico,
I've heard him. He's very loose and far too generous
on the idea of abortion. And so when you ask,
as a Christian, can you ground that and scripture? Where
are you getting this from? He pivots. You know, I
haven't followed him closely, but when I see clips or
when I see commentators speaking on him, you know, I
know I'm not voting for him, so I haven't needed
to follow him closely. And even the people you have
suggested have a dorsed at Mother Jones Obama, it just
tells me everything that I need to know about the
type of Canada he is. But when I've listened to
his arguments, he doesn't actually build a biblical case. It
really is rooted and more of a humanism, more of
this idea of like love your neighbor. But even that
needs to be addressed. When Jesus says love your neighbor,
he means tell them the truth, that the truth will
set you free, that the truth leads to freedom, that
the truth leads to human flourishing. So the idea of
love your neighbor by telling them and affirming whatever lie
they believe, by placating to whatever culture says is in vogue,
that is holistically incompatible with what the Bible says, which
has withstood two thousand years of church history. And so
if you can't fit it into that narrative, then it
probably doesn't biblically align.
Speaker 1: I agree, and I wanted to follow up on that.
Why do you think there are so many interpretations justifications?
And I think I know the answer to this. I've
been thinking about this for over fifty years now, and
something that's occupied my thoughts for a long time. How
do we have so many different interpretations of the truth,
and you think about that in this world right now,
where we're told follow the science, right, that's supposed to
be that the truth. And then, as you mentioned before,
you have politicians and bureaucrats locking us down during the pandemic,
which was extremely harmful in so many ways. And then
you have people saying that, no, there really aren't two sexes.
There's a whole spectrum of genders. I mean, how do
we get into all of this? Is it just because
it's easier to follow that humanist way? It justifies some
wrongheaded thinking that's been going on since you know, man
was came forward. I guess yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean the easy answer to those questions is yes
and yes. But I think the harder question to answer,
and I don't know that if you're not in academia,
you're not in thought leadership as we are. The average
person may not realize that most of this postmodern relative
thought is rooted in critical theories, and as you noted earlier,
critical theories come out of a Marxist framework. So I
would encourage your listeners if they're not familiar, and maybe
they are, but most people I encounter, the average person
is not. But the Frankfurt School of thought, which was
popular in the nineteen twenties. It was a group of
academic thinkers out of Frankfurt, Germany who popularized the idea
of again critical theories, and when what are critical theories,
it is undoing and unhinging truth from what has historically
been said in a Judeo Christian worldview. Even our Enlightenment
thinkers still used a Judeo Christian worldview as their touchdowe
for truth and for policies and for shaping our great nation.
I mean, people would be hard pressed to argue against that.
It's just so clear. But what the Frankfurt School thought
looked to do was to uphind truth and to untether
it from everything that we had ever known to be true,
particularly if it was tethered to faith and to the
Christian faith. And so what they look to do is
to create ideologies based on the oppressed oppress or narrative
that someone is inevitably the bad guy and somebody is
the good guy. And if you are the oppressor, then
you need to be toppled. Then that sort of hegemony
and that sort of power needed to be toppled. But
what's different about the biblical worldview is it looks at
all of us and it says, hey, it turns out
you're all centers. On any given day, you are either
the oppressed or the oppressor, which is why you need Christ.
Because none of you is innocent. And as soon as
you topple one power or wants social hierarchy your structure,
you've just created another. So you need a level playing
field within Christ. That Christ is your ultimate touchstone for
what is good, true, and beautiful. So yeah, I think
to answer your question that sin. You know, I was
on a podcast with my pastor the other day and
he said, so, let me kind of unpack this in
pastoral language. He said, So we have injustice because of sin,
my guests, he said, in God's answer to injustice is Christ. Yes,
and God's method for ending injustice is his Church. I'm like, well, yes,
that is my book in a nutshell, you have filed it.
It's I love how pastors really do have the art
of bringing it down to the lay level. But yeah,
but even you know bigger. To answer your question, I
just don't think people realize how infiltrated the public square
has become with critical theories and Marxist thought, and the
Frankfurt School of thought, which tells us that there isn't
just truth, that your truth is your truth, and we
placate to that idea that we can't really know what
is true, and so it's up to the individual interpretation.
We've become a hyper individualized society. Unfortunately.
Speaker 1: Yes, I know, I've written recently about the Frankfurt School,
the Frankfort School of critical theory, which of course the
new generation is critical race theory, which we'll talk about
here in just a moment as it seen through the
concept of social justice. But you know, I did an
investigation into a Christian private school, a college prep school
in Tennessee, and one of the concerns from the parents
is that the school was not it was getting away
from its foundational Christian values. And one of their arguments
was that the administrator at that school had written a
dissertation for his PhD many years before, and it had
what they considered to be all of these woke ideas.
And you know that the school said, well, that's not
the case and these sorts of things. And I said, well,
can I have a copy of the dissertation? And they
said no, And so I had to had to go
get a copy of the dissertation from the school where he,
you know, he was attended years before, and they gave
me and it was it was absolutely immersed in the
Frankfurt school of thought. You know, this Marxist and now
today the neo Marxist movement all tied to that early
twentieth century movement. And I think there are a lot
of parents who are very concerned about Christian schools across
the country that are now really getting into critical theory.
They might not call it that, but that is exactly
what it is. Are you hearing the same complaints from
parents of these private Christian schools?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 2: I would say that I did from twenty twenty to
maybe twenty twenty three, But as we mentioned earlier, I
think we had a collective wakening. I mean, there was
just nowhere to hide. The lines were drawn in and
twenty twenty one, and I think that there has been
more of a reckoning. So what I'm hearing more of
now are parents who are being awakened to their kids'
school curriculum and are taking action. So I would say
that that was, yes, that that was definitely the case
from I mean, my goodness, I probably started to notice
this in like twenty thirteen in the college classroom. I
was teaching a social issues and education course and just
realizing the curriculum even that I had been assigned because
I was a doctoral student and I had some leeway
I would bring in, you know, like if they had
Cornell West and Paulo Ferrari, then I would balance it.
If you know, I'm like, we're going to read some
Timothy Keller. You need some balanced thought here. But I
started noticing it amongst my students and even within Christian
higher education about twenty thirteen. But I also saw an
awakening with parents in twenty twenty, twenty twenty one, twenty
twenty two. You know, we would see parents at school boards,
parents fighting back, parents advocating for their daughters to have
the locker room, and sports teams you know, to themselves.
So so what I'm seeing more of in this particular
moment our parents really fighting for the boundary lines to
be redrawn to where they should be. But yes, prior
to twenty twenty three, I do think within Christian higher
education particularly and within Christian k through time, there were
some concerning DEI initiatives. There was a lot. You know,
even my kids' school had to reevaluate where do we
stand on gender and sexuality. I think they didn't feel
like this was something they needed to speak up on before,
but by twenty twenty two, twenty twenty three, you couldn't
afford to remain silent. Parents were asking.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, and that became I think COVID really exposed that.
Certainly it did in the public school system where you
had parents home with their kids because everybody was pretty
much locked down, and you watched as kids went through
their lessons and or indoctrination, and they saw it firsthand,
what are you teaching my kid here? And I think
that is a big part of where the reawakening and
the you know, the pushback absolutely came from our guest today.
He is doctor Christina Crenshaw, Assistant professor at Arizona Christian University.
She serves as a fellow at the university's Cultural Research Center,
and is author of the fascinating new book Redeeming Justice,
Reclaiming God's Vision for doing Good in the World.
Speaker 3: College underemployment is at crisis levels. Almost half of recent
college grads are working in jobs that do not require
a college degree. We have not seen numbers like these
since when two thousand and eight. Check out the Watchdog
on Wall Street podcast on Apple, Spotify, wherever you get
your podcasts.
Speaker 1: When did it become good to have high school girls
shower with high school boys? And man, I think that
was a tipping point in this journey as well, was
it not?
Speaker 2: Well, it certainly was for me. I have sons, I
don't have daughters, but I am a female and prior
to really stepping into this sort of advocacy work, my
research agenda at a university was on anti human trafficking
efforts on prevention education, and so I've known for you know,
over ten years the data on sexual assault against females
and where that occurs and sexual abuse in human trafficking
me largely human trafficking effects women and girls, or particularly
sex trafficking anyway, So for me, it was a huge injustice.
I was very indignant on behalf of women when the
Biden administration issued the executive order that reversed Title nine
that essentially allowed males who identify as female to enter
what were once from you know, nineteen seventy to until
this moment, protected spaces for females and I think you're right.
I think a lot of parents said, Okay, this is
the straw that has broken the camel's back. You know,
we've stayed silent through the masks and the mandates and
the vaccines and you know, maybe even some of the
DEI initiatives, but when it comes to protecting our daughters,
who are far more vulnerable than the males seeking their spaces,
we have to speak up all this. And I did
see a collective of rising in parents on or with
parents on that issue. Yeah, And I think from there
it just snowballed. You know, once you begin to ask questions,
and you're asking, you know, the power to make it
make sense, so to speak, and they can't. That's when
I think parents found their voice. And I know that
certainly when my eyes were opened, you know, I think
I had the opportunity to see the water that was
churning below us and coming to a boiling point because
I'm in higher education. But once the public square, you know,
caught a wind of what was occurring and and sort
of these critical theories that were becoming policy, parents rightly
were upset. And yeah, so that's just probably one example
is the reversing of Title nine, and of course we're seeing,
you know, Scotus still is having trouble to finding a
woman unfortunately.
Speaker 1: So it's of members are at least not maybe not all.
Speaker 2: Of them, but but currently Yeah, so I do think
that the collective pressure is pushing back on these false,
harmful narratives, and I'm thankful for that. But yeah, it's
definitely no. As I talked to different colleagues who are
of you know, like minded and conservative and concerned about
where we're going as a country, they you know, they say,
don't take too too deep of a breath or too
deep of a sigh, that it's really just about who
is you know, the administration. That if we, you know,
have a democratic administration, that the Overton window will swing
right back. So I hope that's not the case. I
hope that we have shifted the Overton window enough. But
I do see that there is still work to be done.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, But you paid the price for this, and so
have so many others for arguing reason for taking the
reasonable stands. As a professor, you advocated for separate protecting
spaces for biological women. You face the wrath from parts
of the lgbt Q plus community labeled transphobic. And that's
the thing that's that's really still in play today. That
is the card that the secular vision of social justice
what they play all the time. If you say, listen,
I don't think discrimination to make up for past discrimination
is a good idea, Well you're you're a racist then,
because you're not an anti racist as they describe it.
If you say, no, I believe there are there's a
man and there's a woman. It is a binary thing.
It's not a fluid thing. There's mental illness as well.
That's something you're you know, you're transphobic. And a lot
of people who have strong Christian faith values foundations, a
lot of them over a short period of time. Uh,
they kind of just you know, disappeared into the public
course because they did. They were so afraid of being
labeled these horrible terms and they weren't. How did you
get through that personally?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, let me tell your listeners a little bit
about the backstory, just so they can have some context
for that, because being five years removed, it is more comical.
It was actually very painful when it happened. But beauty
from ashes. I think this, you know again, was the
catalyst for the book. I was teaching at, you know,
one of the nation's largest Christian universities, and it states
that it's unapologetically Christian and evangelical, and that's really why
I was teaching there. I you know, there's a lot
of different universities within Texas, and I went to Texas
A and M for undergrad but I wanted to be
at a distinctly Christian university. I have a friend, Dan Darling,
who wrote a tweet in twenty twenty one January, when
Biden issued the executive order overturning Tay and allowing males
to identify as females and then essentially erasing are the
very least blurring the lines between male and female sanctioned spaces.
He writes this tweet that says, this is concerning. We
need people to speak up. I reply, and I say yes,
as a female, I am concerned. What if females don't
want to share bathrooms and sports with males? Do we
not have a voice? No? And about a week later
I woke up to the student newspaper issuing a They
wrote a whole op ed and it said doctor Crinshaw
is transphobic and needs to be fired, and then a
witch hunt ensued where not the majority of campus, but
a small faction of campus started a petition to get
me fired, tried to get me canceled from the university,
and it got so vicious that finally the administration, the
propos office, had to issue a free speech statement on
my behalf, but really on behalf of all faculty. It's
sort of shocking to me that the university didn't have
one in place to begin with. But it took I'm
assuming legal counsel behind the scenes. It took a lot
of people who were on my side, parents and fellow colleagues,
just you know, the pushback that they received against the
students to finally get a free speech statement in place.
But because of that moment, yes, I was on Fox
and Friends, I was on Alibefstucky, I was the subject
of a lot of different Christian Christian magazines, and I
realized very quickly, because you know, I was wondering, like,
what is this pr what is this media? I didn't
ask for this. To me, this is so logical, this
is so simple. How are we confused on this? I
realized culture was so confused, and not just culture, but
the Church, and that deeply concerned me because again I
expect the world to be crazy in chaotit and to
lack clarity. I didn't think that that's where the church
which was on this, and so I wrote this book.
It really is a voice into the church reminding like, hey,
I know that your heart is in the right place,
but not everything that you do in the name of
compassion is actually really compassionate. For example, when you think
that you are being compassionate by affirming a lie that
a male can be a female and that we're going
to call them trans women and that women need to
just get on board with this and let them in,
that is actually deeply incompassionate and a deep injustice to females,
you know, so that you realize how circular and how
illogical that is, that that's not actually justice and that's
not actually compassion. And that's what happens with a lot
of these critical theories. When you ask people make this
make sense, they can't because they're illogical, they're unfounded, they're
not grounded in anything true. They're not grounded in biblical truth,
and they're not even grounded in biological truth or as
we talked about earlier scientific truth. For example, if you
had data proving that this vaccine was actually stopping COVID,
let's hear it. But until then, could we have a
conversation about where there is no science on this? And
you know, and so I think that's when people are
unwilling to have the conversation that you realize, Okay, you
actually don't have a solid argument here. You're just being
a social justice advocate, but you don't even really know
what you're advocating for.
Speaker 1: Was it the Chip and Joanna Gains a faction at
Baylor that caused you all the trouble? I mean, I'm
curious what you think about all that because having taught
at Baylor right in that backyard, and Baylor the university
is so tied to the identity, if you will, of
Chip and Joanna Gains, and you know they have taken
it seems to me, their faith and tried to put
it through a secular lens. How do you feel about
all of that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, that's a tough one. And because as
you as you noted, I mean, yes, the relationship between
really all of Waco, Texas and Magnolia and Baylor, it's
so very intertwined. I mean even from my front door,
I can see six neighbors houses that work for Magnolia,
just to give you an idea of how intertwined it is.
And so I think we can't just, you know, sort
of like whittle it down to one perspective or one
couple because it is so multifaceted. You know, same with
Baylor University. You know, if I had ten percent of
the university who is loud and vicious in their pushback,
ninety percent supported me. It's the ten percent that's concerning.
And similarly with Magnoliat. You know, for every one person
you could find that is progressive or ascribing to woke ideologies,
there are nine people who are this is ridiculous. It's
just that ten percent that is so loud. And that's
the group that I was speaking to. That's the group
where I say, you know where my heart is to
say you cannot theologically explain what you believe. And you
know the thing with Chip and Juanna, they you know,
they used to go to my church. And so I
think that even this is a fascinating case study in
twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen, I mean, this is public information,
so I'm not sharing insider intel. Our church was dragged
through the rinker for being too conservative, for having a
stance that was you know, considered you know, archaic and
not with the times, because it was a biblical perspective
on gender and marriage, and Chip and Joanna received backlash
from progressives for going to our church, which is clearly
in line with doctrine. And then you fast forward to,
you know, ten years later, and they have sort of
changed their stance. Our church hasn't changed, and our church
fell under scrutiny again. We didn't change. I think that
people are changing with culture, which tells me they're not
rooted in truth. And I'm not singling out any couple,
I mean in general the church. If you can believe
one thing in twenty sixteen, but you've shifted in twenty
twenty six but you don't have a theological framework, you
can't explain your hermeneutics, you don't have an apologetics. Then
you simply listen to culture. Culture is always shifting. But
the biblical narrative, again, that's two thousand years old. We've
been very clear on this from the beginning. So it's
not the Bible that's the problem. It's people listening to culture.
That's the problem.
Speaker 1: I can tell you as a guy who has been
nauseated by the culture, the culture is always the problem.
Just take a look at modern music. But that's that's
a show, a different show of its own. I think
this really gets to the heart of what we've been
talking about in your book. And it's a quote from
Abraham Lincoln. He is said to have said this at
one point, and I certainly see him or imagine him
saying that. Given his second Inaugural, and I'll read both
for you and wanted to get your take on it.
He was asked about God being on the side of
the Union, and he said this, My concern is not
whether God is on our side. My greatest concern is
to be on God's side, for God is always right.
And that ties into one of his most, if not
most famous lines from the beautiful second Inaugural, where he said,
as the war was quickly coming to an end, with
malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in
the right, as God gives us to see the right,
let us strive on to finish the work we are in,
to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him
who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow
and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and
cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with
all nations. I think that directly sums up that perspective
of a man who struggled through his life to figure
out what God was trying to tell him, what God
wanted him to do, and I think he fully understood
that at the end of the day, it's not how
I feel, It's about what God. God is, and as
Abraham Lincoln said, God is always right. I think there
are all kinds of people struggling with that, and I
think what we're talking about is part of that. You know,
the whole notion of love is love, love your neighbor.
You mentioned it before, you know, very core principles, and
so they are taken with this secular view of okay, well,
that expands to everything, even if the truth doesn't apply
to it.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm. Yeah. You know, those are great quotes from Lincoln.
I wish I had included them in my book. I'll
have to start integrating them into my conversations because you're right,
I mean, that's what it fundamentally comes down. To You know,
I have said to people before really reson which resonates
with these quotes. I'm not interested in being on the
right side of culture, or even as the slogan is
the right side of history. I'm interested in being on
the right side of scripture because scripture withstands time. There's
truth to this, and so you know, scripture has the
ability to right the wrongs of history, as we saw
with slavery, and that is something I addressed in the book.
You know, I paint a beautiful picture of the good
that the Church has done in the world. You know,
I go back to the beginning with ending and fanticide,
with Catholic hospitals, Catholic universities, with the ways that we
have been forerunners in adoption care as Christians. So you know,
the list goes on and on. But I do take
a moment to grieve and lament the role that Christians
played in slavery because we were culpable. But then I
remind people that Christians are also attributed to ending slavery.
We can look to William Wibbler Force, we can look
to Frederick Douglas, we can look at all of these
people who actually said Abraham Lincoln because I love the Lord,
because I believe his words are true, Because I believe
in the Amago Day that every person possesses, we're going
to fight to end this injustice. So, you know, has
the Church always gotten it right? Absolutely not. But when
you compare it to all other ideologies, all other demographics,
we have gotten it more right than any other group
throughout history. And it's not because we're just such a
great group of people. It's because we've got Christ in
us again, it's the Imago Day, it's the Holy Spirit
working in us. So yeah, I'd love those quotes by
Abraham Lincoln because you're right, you know, we should look
at an injustice and grieve and say, well, what is
God's heart for this? That's what I want to advocate for.
And so I think specifically to give your listeners some
tangibles when you're confronted with a lie, like well, just
love your neighbor. You just have to be ready to say,
but how can I love my neighbor with a lie? Right? Like,
it's not loving to lie and to affirm a false identity.
Compassion would lead me to say, okay, you have gender dysphor,
yet you have gender confusion, and we need to get
you help, and let's be as compassion as possible in
that journey. But in the meantime, while you're seeking help, no,
you cannot come into my space or compassion, says, I
know that you have an unwanted pregnancy. I know that
that's hard. I know that you're in a position where
you cannot raise this child. But let's find you a
family that can. Let's get you support, Let's find a
crisis pregnancy center that can walk you through this, because
there are other options. So that's what a Judeo Christian
worldview looks like. It looks like finding truth and scripture
and with compassion, you walk a person through a solution
that would honor God, not that honors their feelings or
their vibes. That's, you know, a word gen Z likes
to use. You know, it looks at really looking at
what honors God ultimately, not what honors the individual. Because
we're always changing and we cannot be trusted. The hardest
is say people, so we've got to have a touchdown
that is more solid than our ever shifting hart.
Speaker 1: And that raises I guess a final point for me
in all of this do you think that the idea
of loving loving your neighbor as yourself, which is a
you know, a principle, principal idea foundational uh to Christianity,
But so many people loathe themselves in this world, and
so do they take that loathing, that self loathing and
apply that to their worldview?
Speaker 2: I mean, yes, The short answer to that is yes.
I had not thought of before. But you're right. Maybe
some of the reason we have such a difficult time
defining what it looks like to love others is because
we don't really know how to love ourselves well. That
we're looking for that and like the next dopamine hit
and we're looking for that, and you know, in the
next temporal fix instead of what is eternal. You know
that we've lost sight of the t loss the eternal,
the way that we are just here and passing and
this is not our home. And so when we've lost
sight of tethering ourselves to what's eternal, how do we
love ourselves well? I think you raise a really interesting
point that I don't know that many people are reflective
on that we don't know how to love others well
because we don't really love ourselves with an eternal love.
We're loving ourselves with this temporal, fleeting sort of false love,
which you know. C. S. Lewis has a lot to
say about that, you know, C. S Lewis to your listeners. Yeah,
so I think that you raise a really interesting point there.
I think too. And Carl Truman has written extensively on
how we are so hyper individualized that we think that
love is all about me, me, me, me, me, and
what makes me me happy, and so combating that narrative,
you know, with you know what, it's not really just
about what makes you happy. There are other people to
consider here, and if your happiness is an imposition on
my well being, then we cannot allow that to be
what triumphs in this situation. So, you know, specifically with
the idea of abortion, even though you may have convinced
yourself that ending the life of a baby will bring
you happiness, that is a huge injustice to the baby
in the womb. We've got to find a different solution,
even though you think it will make you happy to
go through gender surgeries or to occupy a space that
doesn't biologically belong to you. I'm so sorry that causes
harm to another. We've got to find another solution. So
one of the things I do talk about in the
book is we've got to find common ground through common good,
you know, work and because not everybody is going to
share our Christian ideology. But where we can at least
gather that common ground is if your idea of good
is a harm to the majority's idea of good, then
it cannot be good. You know that most people can
gather around that notion, even if they're not Christians.
Speaker 1: Indeed, and the great leveler, the great equalizer, is what
you note constantly in your book. We've talked about throughout
our conversation, and that is we are all sinners. We
all fall short of Christ, and we always will. And
that's why we need Christ. That's why we need the
Lord in our lives. That emptiness that we're feeling, and
we all do at different times in our lives. That's
theness when we when we forget about our connection to
our heavenly Father. That's just how I view things. Not
everybody does. I understand. And as he said that, you
know that that tear is what's part of what is
going on in American life today. But I think your
book does well to answer some of those big questions.
Speaker 2: Thank you. It was a labor of love to write it,
I mean, as writing always can be. But my heart
behind it was to speak to a confused church and
to bring some clarity on bringing them back to what
is true, what is good, what is beautiful, not because
society has said it or the classics have said it,
but because God has said it. And that's what makes
it good, true, and beautiful, and that's why it stands time.
Speaker 1: Thanks to my guest today, doctor Christina Crenshaw, Assistant professor
at Arizona Christian University and fellow at the university's Cultural
Research Center. She is also author of the fascinating new
book Redeeming Justice, Reclaiming God's vision for doing good in
the world. You've been listening to another edition of The
Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kittle, Senior Elections correspondent at
The Federalist. We'll be back with more soon. Until then,
stay lovers of freedom and anxious for the Gray