Beeson Podcast, Episode 380 Robert Benne February 20, 2018 https://www.beesondivinity.com/podcast/2018/audio/beeson-podcast-episode-380-benne-interview_01.mp3 Announcer: Welcome to the Beeson podcast coming to you from Beeson Divinity School, on the campus of Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. Now, your host, Timothy George. Timothy George: Welcome to today's Beeson podcast. You know, one of the great things about working at Beeson Divinity School is that we are honored to have very special scholars and guests who come to our school on a regular basis. One of those is here today, Dr. Robert Benne. He is the Jordan-Trexler Professor of Religion Emeritus at Roanoke College in Virginia. He's a Lutheran scholar. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. He has written so many books and contributed in so many ways to the whole issue of public theology. One of his most recent books we're going to talk about a little bit is entitled: Good and Bad Ways to Think About Religion and Politics. Now, before we get into that topic, Dr. Benne, let me welcome to the podcast, and ask you to introduce yourself. Tell us a little bit about who you are and where you came from. Robert Benne: Okay, well first of I want to thank you for the gracious greeting that I've had here. I've heard much about Beeson over the years, and of course, we have personal connections now with our associate pastor at St. John Lutheran in Roanoke. Timothy George: Yes, Myles Hixson. Robert Benne: Myles Hixson. Timothy George: Hello, Myles. I hope you're listening. Robert Benne: He will listen to this, no doubt. And, of course, a long, long friendship with Gerald McDermott, who is now the Anglican Chair. So, it feels like I am very familiar with Beeson from all those connections. Thank you for doing this podcast with me. Well, I was born in 1937, which was the lowest birth rate for many, many years. So, I've always been in small classes. I was born in the death of the Depression. That was partly the small birth rate. Then, I had the experience of growing up in small-town Nebraska in the post-war years, where you had the emergence and expansion of religion, where the churches were full, the GIs were back, having babies. In the small town that I grew up in, you were either Lutheran or Catholic. All the churches were big. There was an incredible coherence of culture at that point. It wasn't fragmented like it is today. I was raised by parents who had been brought up in the Depression years. So, you had frugality, no complaints, fairly low expectations. Timothy George: But, a strong work ethic. Robert Benne: Strong work ethic. One of the amazing things about my life is that we didn't have high expectations. So, every phase of my life has outrun my expectations. In a memoir that I'm starting to write, I entitled it: Beyond All Low Expectations. So, it was a wonderful time to grow up. I had a powerful religious experience. I grew up conventional Lutheran, Sunday School. We used to get perfect attendance bars, and mine went all the way down to my knees. I was a gardener for the most prestigious woman in town. She was the President of Nebraska Women's Clubs and became President of the America Women's Clubs. I was her gardener, and one day I was under her kitchen window, and the window was open. She was talking to a friend on the phone. She said ... I perked up when my name was called, and she said, "Yes, that Bobby Benne would make a fine pastor." Whoa. Timothy George: You never thought about that before? Robert Benne: I wanted to be anything else but a pastor. So, I knew it was the voice of God. I wanted to be an athlete and a coach, that's what was honored in our town. But, I knew from that moment that I was called. It was very ... I never doubted it. Timothy George: So, tell us a little bit about the kind of church you grew up in, your parents, your formation as a Lutheran. Robert Benne: Well, it was Grace Lutheran, which was the Americanized Lutheran tradition. Across the town was the Missouri Synod Lutheran, which was much more doctrinally-rigid, much more ethnic. We were less ethnic, and kind of a mild pietism, not sharply doctrinal. But, because everybody was a Christian in town, you went to church. Everybody that I grew up with went to church. My parents were deeply convicted Christians, but they couldn't express that they had not been educated. In a way, my dad was a great evangelist because he would encourage the ... one of the few boys in town who didn't go to church, for me to go invite to the church. So, I did. It was a fairly homogenous culture. So, I was ready when I got done with college to go see some different part of the world with different kinds of people. But, the second thing that happened after that call was that I decided that I had to go to the nearby Lutheran college where you began to prepare for the ministry. There was a seminary in the town, Freemont, Nebraska, it was Midland College. So, I went off there, and it was a robust, Christian college at that point. A lot of religion courses, a faculty that was supportive, a lot of pre-theological students. We had four required courses in religion, and the final year, we had a brand new Ph.D. from Hartford. He came to Midland and had us read Reinhold Niebuhr. Most of the kids couldn't fathom Niebuhr. Timothy George: This would have been in the 50's, the 1950's? Robert Benne: This is about '58/'59. Timothy George: So, Niebuhr was still active and thriving. Robert Benne: Very active. A major public theologian. We read his…an interpretation of Christian ethics, and I was off and running. I was so excited that I took honors courses with this professor in Kierkegaard and more of Niebuhr. So, I was so well-armed by my immersion. And, these are fairly heavy thinkers for undergraduates, that I won a Fulbright and a Woodrow Wilson, and then went off to Germany on a Full Bright, to Erlangen, which is a strongly confessional Lutheran faculty, in Erlangen, a little bit north of Munich. It had a real history of Lutheran theology. Paul Althaus, you probably know that name. Timothy George: Yes, of course. The great Luther scholar. Robert Benne: And Werner Elert. Timothy George: Yes. Robert Benne: And, Wilhelm Maurer, was a Reformations scholar. But, my favorite was a guy called Walter Künneth, who taught Christian ethics and social ethics. He'd been under house arrest in the Nazi time, and was something of a hero of the next generation because of his resistance. It wasn't like Bonhoeffer who was willing to put down his life, but he got in trouble enough that he was under house arrest. He taught Lutheran Social Ethics, and that really got me into the social ethics side of things, and convinced me after my intellectual awakening at Midland, and then going to Fulbright, that probably it wasn't the pastoral ministry. Timothy George: This eventually led you to Chicago, the University of Chicago- Robert Benne: It did. Timothy George: A Ph.D. What did you work on? Robert Benne: It was a field called Ethics and Society, and a fairly famous man at that point was a man named Gibson Winter. He was my advisor, and he'd become more and more disenchanted with American life as time went on. So, I was kind of a rebel from my own Doctor Father because I didn't share that kind of darkness about his interpretation of American society. After I was on my dissertation year, Lord knows they needed an Ethics professor at the new Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, which was merging a number of ethnic background seminaries, and one of them was in Rock Island, Illinois, and that was the Augustana Center, which is the Swedish tradition. So, I taught there for two years before the new LSTC, Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, was built in Chicago 1967, and opened in 1967. It was the plan of the Lutheran church in American to place the seminary right in the midst of a great university. Most of our seminaries were not. They had either the great fortune or misfortune to plant it right there when the 60's took hold. Whoa. Timothy George: Talk about the 60's, because you lived through the 60's. So did I. I was a bit younger. I was in my teenage years during the 60's, but I knew a lot of things were swirling around. Our society was in convulsion, in some ways, that we still feel the effects of that. What was your experience of the 60's? How did it change you? Robert Benne: First of all, I was already on the social ethics track: Ethics of Society, when I arrived at the University of Chicago. I got in that field and that's ... I believe the 60's from '65 to '75, up until '65, there was still a period of what I call Liberal Idealism, where you had Kennedy and the White House. You had still a lot of coherence in American politics, and you had this great optimism that America was going to take up its major problems and solve them. The prime one being race. Of course, Martin Luther King was at his height in those early Liberal Idealist periods, the great speech in Washington, his movement to Chicago. There was great positive feeling that racism could be overcome and integration was the word of the day. But, there's also a great movement to restore the cities who were in decay. So, urban renewal and community organization was really hot and heavy. Then, urban ministry and the churches taking up their role in the Civil Rights Movement and in renewing the cities, that was really big. So, I went off to a little sleepy seminary in Rock Island, Illinois, and took the students by storm, if I do say so myself. Because, I was chock full of it, and I wanted to get it out. 35 in the senior class, and 33 of them wanted to go into urban ministry. Timothy George: Wow, you were effective, I would say. Robert Benne: Yeah, it was, but it was also misbegotten because 33 of them were not fit for urban ministry. Anyway, one of those became our pastor when we moved to Chicago. But any way, that was an exhilarating time, and a very exciting time. But then, from '65 onward, that's where you get the riots in the cities, you get the heavy involvement of the Vietnam War, you get the student protests, the Protest Movement, you get after King's assassination ... and even before his assassination, he, being outflanked by much more radical blacks: Stokely Carmichael, Rap Brown ... what people don't remember is they pretty much stole the thunder from ...and Malcolm X, from King. They denounced King and his passivism, and his gentle approach, so to say, to overcoming racism, and it was beginning, again, to be pretty scary. Timothy George: The other big issue, of course, at that time was the Vietnam War. These, in a way, were merged as social issues for a lot of people, weren't they? Robert Benne: Well, King then becomes anti-war, and he becomes anti-poverty. He had focus basically- Timothy George: The Poor People's Campaign, yeah. Robert Benne: That's right. So, these things began to amalgam, and they turn more to the left, more radical. As particularly as violence increases, the turbulence increases, I was very much on the left ... or what you called a Liberal Idealist, in my first few years of teaching. But then, everything turned in a radical direction, and Black Power became a very scary kind of thing. I went on a couple of anti-war marches in Washington, and found out that the vast majority of marchers wanted us to be defeated. They were cheering for the Viet Cong. Then, I saw all sorts of cultural decadence on the margins, too, where a lot of marijuana, a lot of wine, a lot of sex- Timothy George: The Sexual Revolution was happening. Robert Benne: Big time. Timothy George: Yeah. Robert Benne: I really had to reassess whether that ... I had got all the ego strokes I had from being on the left, and then decided I couldn't do it anymore. Honestly, I was so out of sync with myself, what I really believed, and what I was posing and posturing. You know, you get that sharp enough and you either continue being a fraud, or you finally gain some integrity, and you know it's going to cost you. Norman Podhoretz wrote a book called: Breaking Ranks, and Chicago is a very liberal seminary. The students were liberal, and to become a Neocon at that point was not easy. Timothy George: Now, your pilgrimage, in some ways, tracks or parallels that of two other people I have known, and had a great influence on me. Neither one in this world anymore, but their influence stays on. One is Richard John Neuhaus, who was, of course, the founding editor of First Things, and the Institute for Religion and Public Life; and also Tom Oden, the great Methodist scholar. You knew both of those, didn't you? Robert Benne: I did. Tom was at the Chicago Theological Seminary, and was way on the left. Timothy George: Yeah. Robert Benne: Richard Neuhaus was a friend for many years. We were all on the left until the early 70's. That was when the Neocon ... Richard was very interesting. One of the things that really changed him was he couldn't persuade the left to be interested in nascent life. Timothy George: Exactly, yeah. Robert Benne: He broke with them on that grounds, and then gradually became an apologist for Democratic capitalism, a combination of democracy and capitalism. So did Michael Novack make that move. They were very encouraging to me. I was thinking the same things, but to hear these guys writing in support of this kind of project was very encouraging to me. So, I girded up the loins and wrote a book called: The Ethic of Democratic Capitalism: A Moral Reassessment, in which I defended the combination of democracy and capitalism against the vast majority of religious intellectuals who thought that socialism was the only option for a serious Christian. Timothy George: Of course, along the way Richard also became a Roman Catholic. Robert Benne: He did. Timothy George: A very, I would say, enthusiastic one. Robert Benne: He did. Timothy George: We use to say, He's more Catholic than the Pope. But he loved the Pope; he knew the Pope: Pope John Paul II, and would often talk about that. You haven't been tempted in that direction, or have you? Robert Benne: Not really tempted. I have had some influence in Lutheran circles. I was part of the group that broke off from the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America to start the North America Lutheran Church. I've written as a Lutheran to Lutherans, and to others, and one practical assessment would be that I would have no voice in Catholicism. Now, Richard ... knows the Cardinal of New York, who introduces him to the Pope. Well, that's one place to start. Another friend of mine, Robert Wilkin, had connections that made him somebody within Catholicism. I would be nobody. But, that's kind of an egoist way of looking at things. But, more deeply, I think the Lord placed me where he placed me in order to be a kind of "bear the Lutheran witness" in the church Catholic. I think there's still things that Lutherans bear that are worth hearing, and that the ecclesial embodiment of those things is really worth fighting for. So, it's a small church, but I know and trust the leadership. It's been good. A relief, to not be fighting a rear-guard action against the church that's liberalizing, but to be in one where you really feel comfortable. Timothy George: Let's talk about your fairly recent book, 2010: Good and Bad Ways to Think About Religion in Politics. Some of these emphases and thrusts that we've been discussing in your life, I think, flow into that book and into your perspective on politics and democracy at this moment in our country. Say a little bit about that. Robert Benne: Well, we're going to have longer lectures about that today, but I wrote the book out of kind of an indignation. The books that I've written are either efforts driven by the idea that I can do better, not being satisfied with a text that you're teaching, so you write one yourself. That was one set of books that I've written, but the other set are when I really get indignant when I think there's really bad thinking going on. One of those had to do with capitalism, and another one of these had to do with both religion and politics. Right before 2010, when I published the book, there was a whole spade of books that were ringing the alarm that religion is getting too mixed up with politics, and we're close to theocracy. Damon Linker, who was here- Timothy George: I remember. Robert Benne: Who was a friend of a Neuhaus and then turned on him, if you remember that story. Timothy George: I do. Robert Benne: You do? Well anyway, he wrote: Theocracy, theocrats, where he argued that a small … of Catholic intellectuals are going to take over America. Could you think of anything crazier than that? That that could happen? There was a whole spade of books warning about religion and politics, and that religion should remain private. Particularly, the real hard haters of Christianity, like Dawkins and others, these Neo-Atheists, really wanted to scrub religion out of public life. Of course, Richard's most famous book: The Naked Public Square, anticipated that. Timothy George: Yeah, that was way back in the 80's, but you're right. Robert Benne: Yes. It was quite a move ... what I call separationism, which was trying to argue that religiously-based morality had no role in the public realm. And, they mistook the separation of church and state for the separation of religion and politics, which is quite a different thing. We all admire the separation of church and state, because it frees church. The founders in it, in the First Amendment, all remember the state churches of Europe in which the church was controlled by the state. In the Second Great Awakening, they believed this is a blessing ... the greatest blessing since the closing in the New Testament that the church is set to evangelize, and no longer controlled by the state. We admire the separation of church and state, but now that's then pressed to mean, in many sectors, and fearfully, maybe in the Supreme Court, that that means the separation of religion and politics, religion is consigned to the private realm of Sunday and your private life, and you should not exercise it publicly. What I'm going to say in the lecture further is that now has become taken up by what one could call Secular Progressives, who are about 21% of the population, but they're in charge. They're in charge of education. They're in charge of the media. They're in charge of entertainment. They're in charge of a lot of heights of culture, but they're not in charge of politics. I wrote an article: Thank God for Politics, because politicians have to be responsive to their constituencies, and their constituency are often not secular progressives. At any rate, you get at this secular progressives you get now, it seems to me, an atmosphere, where it's embarrassing. Not only embarrassing, but maybe even improper for people to articulate religious reasons for this or that public policy, or religiously-based moral reasons for this or that. I find this pretty pervasive in society now. Then, Christians then self-sensor. I find that going on in so many church-related institutions. You no longer talk about the motivations of people for founding the school. You no longer talk about the public relevance of the religious tradition and the life of the institution, the social services institution, colleges, universities. It's a huge pressure to privatize your religious convictions. I find that even more worrisome than that early spade of books. Some Christians have felt completely defeated by this, and so you get radical Orthodox who are saying the ball game's over. Rod Dreher was interpreted that way, in the Benedict Judge option, but when pressed, he really doesn't believe we should disengage with politics. For the moment, he said we had a strategic retreat into focusing on getting the church's act together, and make stronger community. A counter culture. Timothy George: I think among evangelicals, especially younger evangelicals, there is a kind of suspicion that maybe the Christian faith has been subverted, or at least tempted, by the secular political movement. For evangelicals often, it's to the right, maybe even the far right in some cases. Others, of course, the people you've been talking about it and working with, mostly to the left. But, is there a distinctive Lutheran way to think about religion and politics? Robert Benne: Yes, I think there is. And, classically spoken, it's called The Two Ways that God Reigns. Sometimes it's called Two Kingdoms Doctrine, but I don't like that language because it sounds spacial. The Two Ways that God Reigns is a very important Lutheran distinction between the law and the gospel. If you think of history and politics on a horizontal plane, this is God's left hand that governs this plane, and that's the realm of the law in which God sustains certain orders like family ... marriage and family, like the state, like the church, like economic life, work. We're all caught up in those, and there can be some gains, and there can be some losses in history. It's a conflict between God and the devil, and that's where politics operates. But, politics are non-redemptive. Everything on that law reign is non-redemptive. Timothy George: Say what you mean by that. Politics are non-redemptive. Robert Benne: That is they don't save human souls. Lutherans, of all traditions, I think, emphasize the radicality and universality of the gospel. In the gift of God and Christ, we do nothing. We are received. That's the gospel. Politics is our work. So, Lutherans have always been skeptical of religionized politics or politicized religion. So, there's a strong guard against political Messianism. Now, Lutherans failed in Germany when you get the rise of Hitler, but a lot of Lutherans knew exactly what was going on and denounced Hitler because he promised there's a messianic rule for politics in the Nazi movement like there was in Marxism and the Bolshevik Movement. There's a very reluctance to give any redemptive significance to politics, but a great guarding of the universality/radicality of the gospel, which I think is extremely important so that we don't mix the gospel, which is a gift of God and Christ, with our work. That's one important ... and, that also has a lot of realism about what can happen historically. Americans have been informed very heavily by a reformed notion of the kingdom of God in America. Richard Niebuhr's famous book: The Kingdom of God in America. The reason I wrote the book, The Paradoxical Vision, was I read a very famous article by Mark Newell, who called for a Lutheran take on public theology. Timothy George: Yeah. Robert Benne: You remember that in First Things? Timothy George: I do. Robert Benne: He said memorably that, "Reformed Christianity tends to have a strong personal sanctification," and they applied that to history and politics. Lutherans have never really made that kind of leap. Lutherans distinguish horribly between justification and sanctification. Timothy George: Yes. Robert Benne: I was inspired to write the Lutheran take on Public Theology by Mark Newell. Timothy George: Wonderful. Almost out of time, but I want to ask you ... a lot of listeners to this podcast are pastors, they're workers in churches. If you could speak to pastors about how they can most faithfully navigate the political landscape today, what would you say? Robert Benne: Well, I would say to avoid any direct endorsements, or avoid getting too close to any political party or political ideology, because you want the gospel to be universal. You don't want to so closely identify the gospel of any political movement that you lose the transcendence of the gospel. So, you really gotta keep those distinct. In the book, I argue that the movement from core Christian beliefs, things that you preach about, and political options and political choices, is a very complex and jagged one moving from the court. That Christians who have good will and intelligence often disagree with every step from the core over to politics. But, that's not without limits. That is there are some politics that are so wicked, the pastor has to say, "No," the church has to say, "No." But, more likely, I argue that while most policies are ambiguous, and there's a jagged and uncertain mode moving from that court to political choice, there is certain Christian convictions and values that should make their way over to get a common Christian witness. Now I probably would be challenged on this immediately, but I say there are four of them. The top one is religious liberty. All Christians ought to be concerned about the free exercise of religion, because it's under fire in many ways now. So, that should be… all Christians should be concerned about that. The second one is the protection of life at its beginning and end. I think if you're an Orthodox Christian, you're going to take that route. That doesn't mean the exact policy, and I encourage my pastor, who I think does a great job, of emphasizing the Christian value to the congregation, and that the congregation's practice: the honoring of life at its beginning and end, and then they decide how they want to vote politically. So, we just had a bus of 60 go to the Life March in January, but we sponsored ... but, he didn't preach about what policies the government ought to take on that. There's a general affirmation of the sanctity of life. The third one is, of course, care for the poor. Conservative Christians sometimes make a big mistake in not holding that up importantly. Of course, Christ cared for poor, and we ought to care for the poor. The policy is difficult to sort those out, but there's some easy cases. People who are wounded in the war, we've ought to give straight support to them and their family's children. They didn't choose to be in dysfunctional families. So, there's some easier cases and much more difficult cases when you get to able-bodied people. Finally, I added in my list that the support of the traditional notion of marriage in the natural family, but I don't know if that's a political issue anymore. Timothy George: I have one more question for you. Robert Benne: Okay. Timothy George: When you think about the future, and I know you're not a Prognosticator necessarily, are you optimistic or pessimistic about America? Are you hopeful about the future, or do you see a darker scenario? Robert Benne: I think I'm fairly hopeful about America. You know, American history has been a series of revivals. As we look back, that era from the late 40's to the mid-50's was actually a great revival of religion in America. Now, we await another revival. I don't have much of an idea about how that's going to happen, but one of the interesting things is while casual Christians seem to be departing, and it makes you think that Christianity is getting weaker in America, but there's good evidence ... I have just read an article with some good empirical evidence that the core of serious Christians is actually slowly expanding so that the Virginia study of family cultures that puts the faith group at 20% is probably expanding because now we know we’re in a real struggle. The more serious ones want to be serious. There could be, again ... and I think the culture is going to unravel. It's going to get worse before it gets better, but if that minority of Christians really flourish with a counter culture, I think there's a good chance of returning to our Christian wholesome values in this life. I think a lot depends on religious freedom. That's why a lot of Christians voted for Trump, basically on that ground. Secondly, it depends on the quality of the kind of public arguments we make. I'm very hopeful that we've got some interesting public intellectuals now. Ross Douthat-- Timothy George: Douthat. Robert Benne: And Dreher ... and Rusty Reno. Timothy George: Yep. Robert Benne: People listen to them. They're major intellectual players, so you know, I think we've got hope, yeah. Timothy George: A good word on which to close. My guest has been Dr. Robert Benne. He's the Jordan-Trexler Professor of Religion Emeritus at Roanoke College, a distinguished Lutheran scholar, public Theologian. We are so grateful to have you with us at Beeson Divinity School. Thank you for this conversation. Robert Benne: It's been a delight. Announcer: You've been listening to the Beeson podcast with host, Timothy George. You can subscribe to the Beeson podcast at our website: beesondivinity.com. Beeson Divinity School is an interdenominational evangelical divinity school, training men and women in the service of Jesus Christ. We pray that this podcast will aid and encourage your work, and we hope you will listen to each upcoming addition of the Beeson podcast.