It’s been one month since the launch of my new podcast with BNG, Highest Power: Church + State, which is currently ranking within the top 20% of all podcasts nationally.
“I’m thrilled with the podcast and what you’re doing here,” BNG Executive Director Mark Wingfield told me during his appearance on the show. To those who follow BNG, Wingfield promised: “We’ve got to have a record of what’s really happening. There’s got to be a historical record. And we’re going to do that every day, every week. We’re going to keep plugging away, telling you what the truth is, so that there is a baseline you can refer back to on this. We’re not going to be cowed by this.”
Rick Pidcock
“This” meant the Trump administration’s intimidation of the media for covering today’s stories in ways Trump doesn’t approve of. But members of the press who cover the stories of today aren’t the only ones facing Trump’s bullying these days. So are historians who share the stories of our past.
In the final episode of last month, I interviewed historian Beth Allison Barr about Trump’s recent executive order which the White House titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” According to that order, American history is being rewritten by woke liberals in a way that replaces “objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth.” It criticizes telling negative stories about our history because such stories might deepen “social divides” and foster “a sense of national shame.”
To solve this “problem,” Trump is putting Vice President JD Vance in charge of “saving our Smithsonian” by removing what Trump and Vance consider to be “improper ideology.”
But as Barr notes, “That’s what history is, an act of rewriting. The more we can understand, the more we can tell, the more we can reevaluate” because “when you’re only taught a history where only a certain type of people are always in charge, then it is much easier to convince people that only a certain type of people should be in charge.”
Analyzing the news while questioning the assumption that only a certain type of people should be in charge is essentially what we’re doing with “Highest Power: Church + State.” Episodes release at 5:30 p.m. Eastern Time on Mondays and Thursdays. This is one of three podcasts available from BNG, along with “Stuck in the Middle with You” and “Change-making Conversations.”
‘Writing out’ the oppressed from history
Trump’s concern about rewriting history is interesting because for history to be rewritten, it has to be written in the first place. So the logical question would be to ask who it’s been written by, or what perspective it’s been written from. And typically, history was written by the powerful.
As Barr explained, what people often label “objective history” is really a “historical narrative that was born in the 19th century, mostly among white European and North American intellectuals, who saw history primarily through the lens of white male imperialists. And so this was the history that was often being taught at universities, etc. And when people argue that they want objective history, this is often what they are wanting to go back to, this very narrow perspective on history that was produced by actually a very small group of white European and North American intellectuals, and all male, almost all male.”
Barr suggested that by “intentionally excluding women and people of color, as well as any sort of minority group that is not that group that is in power,” these men are actually “writing out” of history the stories that don’t make them look good.
Telling the whole story
“History is not just the good things,” Barr reminded us. “History is the entire narrative about the past. And so you can’t just cherry pick out the things that you like. … This is one of the accusations that we find among these white, the Religious Right, always arguing that the way they see more progressive history is cherry picking the past. And I’m like, do you not actually realize it’s the other way around? … They are wanting to pick the parts that they like that magnify themselves and tell better stories about themselves and leave out the parts they don’t like.”
“They are wanting to pick the parts that they like that magnify themselves and tell better stories about themselves and leave out the parts they don’t like.”
Then giving examples of how people support Civil War statues, Barr said it’s really “an imagined reality … that makes white people feel better.”
Instead, she said, “What I’m interested in doing is telling as whole of a picture as I can, which includes the more positive things as well as the more negative things.”
By opening ourselves to hearing both the positive and negative things about our past and present, we become vulnerable to hearing how our actions and the actions of our ancestors may have affected others, as well as how privilege and wounds are passed down through the generations to today. And when we listen to the previously silenced stories of the oppressed, it changes things.
“History is taking that perspective into account, but then also bringing in all of the new evidence that we have, and the new perspectives that we have on history,” Barr explained. “If you’re honest with what your perception is of the history, what it does is it adds a different way of seeing.”
Experts on the underside of power
In our first month, we’ve discussed such topics as the war in Ukraine, Trump’s address to Congress, the measles outbreak, processing our fears of retribution while standing up for the marginalized, Trump’s attacks on the media, abuse scandals in progressive Christianity, our nation’s crisis of masculinity, sitting in the tension of wanting to support the funding of Christian aid to the suffering despite disagreeing with the often bigoted theology of those involved, and Trump’s executive order about writing history.
In addition to two solo episodes and a conversation with Mark Wingfield and Beth Allison Barr, interviews on these topics have included Anthea Butler, Janet Kellogg Ray, Susan Shaw, Angela Denker and Chrissy Stroop.
Each of these women have the credibility that comes with the most advanced degrees in their respective fields. And yet, they have in some way experienced life on the underside of white, male imperialist power.
“I want to emphasize the wisdom that is lost when powerful white men get away with writing out the voices of those who have spent significant time pursuing wisdom on the underside of the highest power.”
Of course, I do plan to converse with men more as time goes on. But I want to emphasize the wisdom that is lost when powerful white men get away with writing out the voices of those who have spent significant time pursuing wisdom on the underside of the highest power.
Anthea Butler noted in our interview that the men in power are “in a constant state of trying to punish people who don’t think like they do.”
Angela Denker suggested one of the reasons for this is that if “God is thought to be an angry, violent man, then boys and young men will comport themselves in order to fit that image.”
Chrissy Stroop observed how “Liberation Theology comes around more as a reaction to the suppressive Christianity.”
In order to respond to the suppressive impulses of white Christian men in our society today, Janet Kellogg Ray said we need to be humble enough to reject the “cultural Gnosticism” of thinking we have “this special knowledge” that no one else has, while Susan Shaw said we need to respond by being brave despite the fear we feel.
These women are sharing with us a different way of seeing than the standard value systems of hierarchy that so dominate religion and politics today.
Listening to each other
At the 2024 Election Postmortem hosted by Notre Dame’s Center for Philosophy of Religion in December, David Campbell, professor of American democracy and director of the Notre Dame Democracy Initiative, said: “The key to success, the one who figures it out, will be whoever can combine those two wings of the Democratic Party, somehow figure out how to get the secularists and those other religious folks to work together. If they can do that, then I suspect you will see dramatic change in American politics.”
In order to work together, we need to begin talking together.
While I don’t want to presume to have figured it out, this is essentially the vision I have for the “Highest Power: Church + State” podcast.
In this first month, we’ve included the voices of everyone from atheists to Christians in pastoral ministry. Despite our religious and perhaps political differences, we need to listen to one another’s perspectives as experienced on the underside of the religious and political power games. And we need to do so with curiosity, openness, celebration and lament, without devolving into the defensiveness that comes from posturing self over neighbor.
We may have different wonders. But we share common wounds. As Barr told me, our communion together is about “recognizing their voices, recognizing the reality that history is made up of all of us, and that we all played significant parts.”
And when those with the highest power charge us with being divisive for listening to voices other than theirs, Barr counters, “When it becomes divisive is when some people stand up and say, ‘We are the most important ones, and we are the only ones who should be heard.’ That’s what causes divisiveness.”
Find “Highest Power: Church + State” at Apple podcasts or by searching your favorite podcast distribution source. If you’re new to podcast listening, you also can access the podcast straight from the source by going here on any web browser.
Related articles:
Politics, faith and mission: A conversation with Beth Allison Barr | Opinion by Greg Garrett
The importance of listening anew to holy Scripture | Analysis by Mark Wingfield
That time I got an angry call from the subject of an article about anger and abuse | Analysis by Rick Pidcock