Shifting Culture
On Shifting Culture we have conversations at the intersection of faith, culture, justice, and the way of Jesus. Hosted by Joshua Johnson, this podcast features long-form conversations with authors, theologians, artists, and cultural thinkers to trace how embodied love, courage, and creative faithfulness offer a culture of real healing and hope.
Shifting Culture
Ep. 416 Andrew Root - Rescuing Church Growth from Idolatry
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I sit down with Andrew Root to talk about his new book Baal and the Gods of More and the ways fertility idols still shape how we think about growth in the church. We explore how the drive for more - more people, more influence, more momentum - can pull us away from the way of Jesus, even when we think we’re being faithful. This conversation moves from Elijah to Mary and reframes growth as being formed into Christ, not building something bigger.
Andrew Root (PhD, Princeton Theological Seminary) is Carrie Olson Baalson Professor of Youth and Family Ministry at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota. He writes and researches in the areas of theology, ministry, culture, and younger generations and is the author of more than twenty-five books, including the six-volume Ministry in a Secular Age set. Root is also the coauthor (with Kenda Creasy Dean) of The Theological Turn in Youth Ministry. He serves as staff theologian at Youthfront, is a frequent speaker, and cohosts the Ministry in a Secular Age podcast.
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A thoughtful, deep dive into one of the most talked-about movements in American history.
The rain will come, the small cloud will will occur. But it's not going to come from your effort. It's not going to become from your control. It's going to become, it's going to come as pure gift. And so the question is, are communities prepared to receive the gift, the gift of God's presence, the gift of God's act, or are we thinking we got to get our capital in order, and we got to find ways. I mean, there's a certain way that capital itself becomes its own God, because capital can grow itself, you know, like, you know, like, what is? What do we all want? We want our 401, case, to have enough principle in them that they just grow without having to do anything. They're self perpetuating forms of growth. And this is where we're kind of trapped, because none of us can really retire with retire without fiscal capitalism. And it's it's growth markets, but at the same time, it does start to form us, in a way, to think money is more powerful than God. Capital is more powerful than God because it acts. And your God waits and waits and waits until you are in deep need and then reveals God's self and saves.
Joshua Johnson:Hello and welcome to the shift in culture podcast in which we have conversations about the culture we create and the impact we can make. We long to see the body of Christ look like Jesus. I'm your host. Joshua Johnson, Andrew root is back on the podcast to explore how ancient fertility idols still shape the way we think about growth, and how that logic has quietly taken hold in the church. We've inherited a vision of growth that assumes more is always better. More people, more influence, more momentum. And in that pursuit, it's easy to trade the way of Jesus for strategies that promise results. We talk about his new book, Baal and the gods of more, and how the ancient pull toward fertility gods isn't as distant as we think in a culture and a church driven by more, bigger and better. Andy names the ways we've absorbed that logic, whether it shows up in innovation, influence or identity, we're often chasing growth in ways that don't look like Jesus. We walk through the stories of Elijah and Mary from cultural analysis to the practices that shape our lives, this is about learning the difference between growing something and being formed into someone, into Christ. If you feel the pressure to produce to scale, to prove your worth, this conversation offers a different vision of faithfulness. So join us. Here is my conversation with Andrew root Andy. Welcome back to shifting culture. Excited to have you back on great to be back. I'm excited to dive into I'm going to call, I don't know if I'm going to say Baal or Baal, but one of the two, because he could pronounce them both ways. So Baal and the gods of more your new book, so you actually talk through this Canaanite fertility god as a representation of what is kind of happening now, when we are pursuing growth in the church, why does Baal really come forth? Why is this God something that we want to look at as reminiscent of what's happening now?
Andrew Root:Yeah, well, first, I'm deeply insecure about the title, because it seems like I'm, like, trying to cosplay an Old Testament scholar or something, you know what I mean? So this is, there's no ground broken here in, like, Near Eastern religion, or, you know, like Old Testament scholarship or anything like that. So it is, it's, it's, it's within the vein of my larger project, which is to kind of do kind of cultural philosophy and and continue to build a kind of pastoral ministry. But what I'm interested here in is like, really, what's growth and what's growth all about? And, you know, there's something endemic to being, I think, late modern, that we have a certain view of growth. I mean, I think we always do. I think cultures always give us a kind of interpretive framework for what we think is growth. And growth usually has something interconnected with some kind of moral sensibility of what's good. And so I think we have a particularly interesting one. And this was this book was really born being in in Israel, being in Jerusalem, right before. I mean, this was, I, we were in Jerusalem, I guess it was January before the attack that happened in October. So, you know, it was like nine months or whatever before that. And we were in these in the Israel Israel Museum, I guess it's called Israeli Museum, and looking at all these, like fertility bail, like they had these bales, like these clay bales. And it was just really shocking to me, first of all, because they were so old, you know. And like you're thinking, My gosh, Elijah was walking around these, these parts of the world when people had these things in their homes, or whatever, you know. And so then, and then we went to Rome. We were taking. Our kids kind of around as my son was graduating, and then you're in, like, the the Renaissance art wing, and you're like, this stuff so new compared to what we what we just saw. But I became really enamored with the thoughts of Baal as this fertility god, and in the pictures of the Madonna and the child, and thinking like those are two very different conceptions of what it means to grow, you know, like one is the sense that Israel's on a kind of downside of a golden era, which seemed to really resonate with me, with a lot of the institutions I'm part of in Protestantism, everyone kind of feels like we're on the downside of a golden era. Like, you know, things our seminaries used to be so strong in the 80s or the 70s or the 60s, and our congregations were full, you know, our denominations were so strong, and we've lost, you know, half our members over the last 30 or 40 years. And so there seems to be a parallel to me in First Kings and Second Kings, with kind of, again, playing this kind of cultural idea with American Protestantism, in this kind of sense that we're on the downside of a golden era. And I think when you're on the downside of golden era, you become very tempted to seek fertility gods. And I think that's one of the points of that text. So I'm trying to do a kind of theological read next to a kind of cultural analysis that looks at first and second Kings related to our kind of cultural moment, and asked a really big question of, like, what is growth in? What's growth about? And can pastors really concern themselves with growth, or shouldn't they concern themselves with growth? You know, like those, those questions are kind of what I'm after in this, in this weird titled book.
Joshua Johnson:But it's great. I mean, you talk about Hartman Rose's dynamic stabilization, which is constant escalation, moving forward, constant growth. And I think that the churches like took that on of like a we need constant growth, or else we're in decline. Just walk us through what that is for, like the economy. We think about it, the economy, but how did the church take that on too?
Andrew Root:Yeah. I mean, I think this is a really interesting, interesting element that I've been trying to kind of work out is, yeah. I mean, it's showed up in a couple other places in my work, which I really think Rose is right in his his bigger point is that you are in a modern society, or you're you're modern when you stabilize your society dynamically. And he really means that when you stabilize your society by growth. And so there is something that's just fundamental to being a human being, in being a cultural, social human being, that you always have to stabilize your society. And you shouldn't be part of any society that doesn't want to stabilize itself, or, you know, any cultural form or collective that doesn't want to stabilize itself. I mean, we are contingent historical beings. So what keeps what keeps our practices, what keeps our ways of life going across time? And every every society has to figure that out. You know, every society has to figure out what keeps them stable, you know. And I think one of the realities of being in this kind of secular age as late modern people is what we have conceded to, or what the structures of our society lead us to believe is what stabilizes us is escalating growth. It's growth of more resources. I mean, ultimately we would sum this up to growth of more capital. And obviously capital means money, but it also means relevance. It also means, you know, like social forms of social capital. It means just the sense of being able to kind of have capital and grow capital is what, what stabilizes you and all of its kind of cultural and economic forms. And I think it's really hard then for all forms of faith, and I think particularly Christianity, to escape that escalatory logic, partly, in some ways, you can't, because you're modern, you know, like we're modern, and we, none of us, can just press a button no longer be modern. So this kind of escalating growth is just, you know, in the ether. It's in the air we breathe. But there's other ways that it just kind of sets us up and forms us for, well, for idolatry. And that's, that's what I'm trying to at least analyze in this book
Joshua Johnson:a bit. I mean, you talk about two different idols than the techno optimism that we have in one side and the identitarianism on the other side. So because we want to, you know, pursue this growth, constant escalation. We see those idols. What are these idols on either side?
Andrew Root:Yeah, yeah. I mean, one of the things that I'm trying, I've entered into talking with economists in this book too, you know, so there's always this, I'm trying to be interdisciplinary when I, when I do this work. So this has taken me to some conversations with economists, and one of those economists is this Catalonian sociologist, but his basic point is that, like, first of all, like this escalatory growth comes from industrial industrialization. So once you enter into industrial society, then you enter into kind of escalate. Forms of growth. In other words, you have to kind of keep feeding machines, and that worked, really, you know, for the most part, pretty well for us in the first industrial revolution and in the second industrial revolution, you know, when you think of kind of steam and then to electricity, like we got a lot of standard of living growth out of that. But the third industrial revolution, he calls this the kind of digital, that kind of microprocessor Industrial Revolution. And it hasn't, it hasn't brought the same kind of growth. And one of the things it has produced, though, is inside what he calls this networked industrial revolution, is it tends to do this strange thing that we all live with now, is it turns personality itself into capital. And these kind of capitalist forms of escalation move more, more than kind of structures and machines move into personality. And so the the platform, the network, becomes a perfect place to do that. And what I what I'm trying to expose here, and this is a bit controversial, I think, I think some people be a little annoyed with me on this is that inside this decline narrative that we take in, or inside this kind of vulnerability of dynamic stabilization, the two responses I see very clearly across both evangelical and mainline Protestant communities are either to become techno optimists and essentially say there's some technology that can can get us out of this, and we don't necessarily, we might mean that as AI or something, but we also mean that in the church is like, there's some program, there's some new form of preaching, there's there's some new kind of strategy that that can do this. And, you know, we've, I think we've talked on this podcast about our addiction with innovation. Then, like, we turn pastors and say, you have to be an innovator or your church, your church, your denomination, will will go down, and then the other side of this. So you have those folks, and they, I think they're littered and dominant in some denominations and some in some structures and some networks. But then there's a whole other group that are kind of identitarians, and they believe they're kind of more activist in their in their kind of drives, and are really wanting to have discourse about identity issues. And identity issues are kind of driving reality. And Castile is this guy I'm drawing from this Catalonian sociologist. It's like identity becomes the most a really important reality inside of this third industrial revolution, this networked reality identity becomes, you know, really significant. And this kind of three volume work, he's he's laid that out, and I see that playing itself out. What I'm trying to expose that will probably make me know friends and make everyone hate me, is, I'm trying to say both sides are actually interestingly capitalist, like they're, they're escalatory growth on both sides. I mean, one is kind of escalatory growth in kind of classic ways. If we can find the innovation, we can find the people, we can find the relevance, we can we can grow this. The other side is like, if we can just escalate recognition for the right kind of identities, then the Church will become an attractive community of people, or Christianity will become more culturally aware and therefore more relevant. And I'm, I'm, I'm skeptical of both, and partly because I'm, you know, a theologian of the cross, so any forms of escalatory growth I start to worry about, because the very form God takes to reveal God's self most fully is a event that looks anything like escalatory growth, but looks like ultimate failure that that saves the world. So, yeah, so I'm trying to, I'm trying to make that point in living in the main line with a lot of identitarians who want to be anti capitalists, I see that the way they function online is completely an escalatory growth, capitalist growing kind of recognition capital becomes, becomes the game. And so, yeah, so I'm going to make no friends from this book. So you know, you're probably the last person who will talk to me after
Joshua Johnson:but, but I love this because I mean, it actually then informs the idolatries in our heart that it's not really we try to get out of it, right? We so with with identity. We're trying to get out of it some way, but we're still in it. We're still on this hamster wheel of capitalism and growth and and scaling more and more and more. And we just need people to recognize this, and we're gonna actually have our moments. Can we get out of this hamster wheel like, is it? Is it something I want to know. How do we recognize that specific god I believe Paul when he says that we don't wrestle against flesh and blood, but we do wrestle against the principalities and the authorities like there is a power that be. Do you think it's like a complete modern age, or is it particularly American Christianity as. A maybe a God that is trying to deceive us.
Andrew Root:Well, what I think is particularly American, and I'm with you, I think now we're gonna even make more people think we're weird. But I do think that these are fundamentally issues of spirit, you know, like, these are spiritual issues that are that are at stake here, and because they're deeply moral issues of what it means to be kind of aimed towards the good, what it means to be possessed by a narrative and a story that frames our lives. What I think is particularly American about this is that the other economists that I deal with in this book is this kind of grumpy economist that I think is brilliant, but is very grumpy. Is this guy by the name of Robert Gordon, who wrote this huge, thick book, which, you know, now, you know, I'm addicted to big, huge, thick books. Like, that's, those are the books I like to read. But this big book called The Rise and Fall of American growth. And his basic point, this is why he's so grumpy. His basic point, this is the positive piece of it. He says, like, we know that there was unprecedented growth for America, for the West, but really for America, that creates the American century from 1870 to 1970 like just unbelievable amounts of GDP growth that lead to just huge forms of standard of living growth. And is what makes him grumpy, is he can show statistically that this ended in 1970 like it has not, we have not seen the same amount of growth that we did in those 100 years. And he thinks those 100 years were unique, a unique 100 years. He calls this the special century that we just had because of the distributions of the two first two industrial revolutions, it just led to huge forms of standard of living growth, you know, changes. Is one of my points on this is, this is, this is why people in the early 1960s thought the Jetsons was a documentary. I mean, it just seemed logical that we were gonna have flying cars. Because, you know, if you were born in 1860 and you made it to 1940 or 1950 or something, I mean, the way. I mean, this is why Back to the Future works too, because 55 and 85 are pretty different. But you go 30 years, you know, and whatever you know 30 years, what's that oh five or something like that, you know, it's not that different. Like 85 and oh five is not that different, but 55 and 85 are huge difference, and that's because 55 to 85 you're right in the middle of the huge standard of living growth of this unprecedented GDP growth. But my my point is like, what's uniquely American is that our GDP growth and standard of living just took off in those 100 years. But then American Protestantism, and I think this is different than Europe. American Protestantism just seems to thrive when GDP growth is, is up, like people just start looking for churches when their standard of living is going up. And I don't think, I don't think that correlates the same way, say, in Europe. So we have this thing we call, you know, the what we call it, the Christian century. And there's a publication called the Christian century. But this was all, you know, this was a mission statement the Christian century. And it really was the Protestant century. You know, it was very un Catholic, you know, didn't really care about Catholics. It was it the Christian century meant the Protestant century. And so what I'm pointing out in this book is, like the special century in the Christian century are just, they almost are completely overlap. But once 1970 happens, mainline Christianity all of a sudden feels the same that same decline. So once the economy starts to implode, I think evangelicalism comes in in the 1970s and they are evangelicals, and the Neo evangelicals that came out of World War Two are much more they're better positioned to deal with the headwinds. They're more entrepreneurial. They're less embedded in kind of structures that were built during the special century. They had a bit of being kind of outsiders within that, and that allowed them to have a really to respond well. And if we want to talk in this language, win the escalatory battles from 1970 to say, 2010 like they become conservative Protestants become the the Protestant expression, because they can deal more with low GDP, low standard of standard of living, that mainline Christianity just just hasn't. So there's something uniquely American about this, but then there's some of the ways we think about growth that I think are pretty standard, global, at least affected, affected by globalization. But are, you know, embedded in western imaginations?
Unknown:I think, I mean, we
Joshua Johnson:could see these things happen, but like, how do I recognize that I'm following an idol and I'm not following Christ like in our churches?
Andrew Root:Well, this is where I want to I want to transition our imaginations about growth. You know, like to say it really bluntly, we are really formed to think about growth. Or let's just start with this and say that I think there is something inherent with. In Christianity where growth is important, you know, like, I'm not trying to be a anti growth person, you know, or but I think it's, I think within the theological traditions are broadly, you know, Protestant as well as just overall, the Christian theological tradition, growth has been growth into someone, and not growth of something. And so there's a deep sense of what it means to grow into Christ, what it means to take the form of Christ, be conformed to Christ, as opposed to growing something. And I think, you know, especially as Protestants, we should be very aware of that, because, you know, our reformation starts in the kind of mixing up in a more cultic way than a kind of capitalist way, but kind of mixing up the growth of something as opposed to the growth of the cultic reality, even, you know, as opposed to the growth into someone. And so I try to use like the picture of Artemis, you know. So I transition from like these, these, you know, like Baal, as in, you know, first and second Kings to Artemis of Ephesus, who, we had this, like, very Saturday live experience in the in the Vatican Museum. I'll just tell you this story. We were, we were with so we had our two kids, we take, took them out of school. It was Owen's senior year, and the it was still some kind of covid restrictions or something, or, I don't know, the Vatican museum was basically saying, if you want to come in, you have to do a tour. You know, you like you. We're not, we're not selling tickets. This was 23 so, so we booked a tour with this like, ended up being this gruff Italian woman that her voice sounded like, Well, we actually walked up on her as we gathered, you know, hot boxing, a couple cigarettes, and you could tell it was just like expressos, and cigarettes was what she lived on. And so we show up, and we happen to be all Americans, two Spanish people, and all Americans, and they're all homeschoolers from from Denver, and it's a group of these Americans. And so the Spanish folks, as soon as we get into the Vatican, they ditch us. I don't know if they just hated the thought of being with Americans, or were just like using the tour to get in the door, and then we're going to do their own thing. But we end up down the, you know, like the Greek kind of Hellenistic wing of the Vatican tour, and we come to Artemis. And if people have seen this picture, Artemis kind of stands with her hands open, and she's covered in these kind of spherical kind of things. And one of the homeschool mom goes, Oh, are those eggs? Are those eggs? All over, they kind of do look like eggs. But the gruff Italian tour guy goes, no, no, no. And she was like, looking for the English word. She's like, No, no. Those are no no. Those are teats. Those are teeth. And this poor homeschool mom just was so deeply embarrassed now, like turning red and but that is kind of the point is, you know, like this fertility god is is almost depersonalized to just give you resources, like to just extract resources from it. And it's a growth of more, more of that, more of these resources, where you can see how we can become addicted to that as as you know church leaders. But then, like I said, you go down to the to the Renaissance wing and see all these pictures of the Madonna and the child, and you're seeing a different kind of growth, as the baby is with the mother, there's a growth into that relationship. And of course, in a lot of those pictures, you'll either have the child or the mother, usually the Madonna, usually the mother, looking at you and essentially inviting you into this relationality of the mother and the child to live inside of this relationality. So this is really what I'm trying to get at, is that the church has its has its life inside the relationality of what it means to be with the sun and to continue to find ourselves more deeply in conformity to the sun, and find our life with the sun inside this relationality, as opposed to growth. And yet, I think so often we feel decline, and we we're more interested in a fertility god. We want our God to be more of a fertility god than than the crucified Christ, then the child in the arms of Mary. And so I'm trying again. I mean, this is not unique for my work is kind of hitting the same beat of thinking of the relational over the instrumental, and trying to say, like we encounter God's presence in the relational and so even growth has to be bound deep in this relational reality. And we always have to be on guard, to your point, like we have to be on guard, of of the instrumental, of how we, we use, you know, ways, means, ends, leverage things to get more of something else and so that that's, that's the kind of drumbeat I'm I'm pounding
Joshua Johnson:in this book. Well, I want to keep with Artemis for just a moment, because what I like about the story of of Paul in. In Ephesus is that, as he is there, and he is speaking and preaching Christ crucified and small, and all these idol makers are going out of business. So people are not buying these Artemis idols anymore, and they're going out of business. They, you know, take them in. They want to throw them in prison. And, and, you know, the the judge said he could go because he's never spoken against this idol. And so I find that interesting, like today, when we have these idols, like these fertility idols, what does it look like for for us to do? Maybe do, what you're doing is point to the relationality of God and, like, where we want to be formed into the relationship with God. This is the actual growth, grow in our relationship. Or is it to, like, denounce the idol? So yeah, can we take an example from Paul of how to speak to the church today?
Andrew Root:That's it means, a great point, and one that I didn't work in the book. So, yeah, I know,
Unknown:but it was just something I thought
Andrew Root:of right now. So, but it's, it's, it's a really great point, because I do think I'm trying to knit together a large enough story in a structural one that, like Paul and Ephesus, I don't think you can just, I don't think you can become a icon, classic, idol breaker completely like in what I mean by that is like, for Paul in that world, he can't avoid the pantheon of the Hellenistic and and and the Roman gods, like they are there everywhere. So now it's like, how do you live distinctively with within that, and instead of pointing against them, how do you point to a very different logic, a very different story, a dare, a very different thing to be formed into? And I think that's very similar in our perspective. Like, I, you know, like I have some pretty cutting things to say about capital and capitalism, but I'm not an anti capitalist. And, you know, like, in many ways, I wouldn't be on this podcast if I was completely anti capitalist. And I'm hoping a few people buy some books, you know what I mean, like, and I'm very aware I got to move some books to write another book, you know, so and you know, somebody was kind enough to send me an email invite me to come to their church to speak at a conference, or, you know, at their church, I wouldn't do it for free, you know, like I would, you know, ask to be paid an honorarium for that. So I'm not an anti capitalist in any way. But I also think, like Paul, then we have to be hyperly aware of how these things form us, and how they form our senses of, well, really, our senses of the large story, like what saves us, and I think that's really what I'm kind of getting at here is, is, how do we even inside a capitalist system like Paul lives in a very a society filled with all these, all these Hellenistic gods, how do you live within that society and live for another story, live for another source of what actually saves you. And you're you're really worshiping the idol when you think what will save you is the fertility god. And in some ways, you can't avoid the fertility god. I mean, in in that, in that cultural context, I think one of the reasons why Paul's let loose is because he doesn't do the the most dangerous thing you could do in any society, which is undercut their narrative of stabilization, you know. So they do think the worship of these gods stabilizes their society. He hasn't spoke against them. So essentially, the judges say he doesn't put our society that much at threat. I mean, he's got a weird story, and he can go on with that weird story, and I could see how it could be dangerous for whatever, but he hasn't spoken against our our system. And, you know, I think, I think there's a certain way for us that we have to live inside of these systems, but we also then have to ask ourselves, like, what really do we think saves us and be really and I think this is a really hard thing. Is we have to, we have to know what it means to live inside those structures and be faithful, but keep from a kind of synchronism of blending them together. Because to take us back years, you know, I think that's what Israel does in the days of Elijah and Ahab, is they actually still like Yahweh, you know, they still, they still like Yahweh, who shows up when they're in Egypt and rescues them. But, you know, Yahweh ism doesn't seem to be getting them where they want to go. And so what if they blend a little bailism in, you know, like that. They're trying to keep those things. And Elijah's prophetic move is to say it's not possible. You know, don't, don't try. You can't. You can't put Baal and Yahweh together. These are two completely different kinds of of of logics. So you do get a more radical response from Elijah, which is basically like completely down, down with with Baal and completely down with Jezebel. I mean. And the interesting thing about Jezebel is Jezebel. An economist. I mean, we unfortunately have thought of her as, like this sexual temptress, and I don't think that's the right way to read her. She's, she's actually a Harvard educated economist, and she's, she's come in to bring a little fertility, fertility economic gasoline on this kind of failing Yahweh ism. But of course, Elijah's point is, Yahweh doesn't work like this. Yahweh doesn't turn people into instruments for gains. Yahweh makes children who are called into rest and into Sabbath. And you can't really blend these things. So it's a big question for pastors, like, what living inside a kind of late capitalist age, what can be, what's just the structures you live in, and what has to be opposed? What's the syncretism that, that you can't, you know, that the gospel will not allow you to blend together. And what is just, you know, what's just having a credit card in your pocket that you, you know, you like, We honestly couldn't function without, you know, with, with, with this, you know, so it this is, I think this is the struggle and helping your people be able to think in and make sense inside of those realities, I think are really, is a really difficult thing. I want to dive
Joshua Johnson:into that, that story a little bit more, you know, Elijah First and Second Kings to walk us through to say, how, how does this enmeshing of Baal and Yahweh that was happening there? How does that that start to break apart? So can you just give an overview of these?
Andrew Root:Yeah, I'll try and my my reading is really, you know, not. I hope I'm doing some unique things with the interdisciplinary conversation and aiming at all towards pastoral ministry. But really, my read is very much brueggemann's read, and therefore, you know, it has all the advantages and all the disadvantages of bergamans read. So it's very much, I think first and second Kings is very much a prophet's tale, and the priestly class, it kind of, you know, is getting poked in the eye here and in the prophets are the kind of heroes of this. But the idea, I think, really is, then, this kind of sense of, like, is it the word of Yahweh that saves or is it cultic activity, you know? So if we think of stabilization. Again, I think ancient people were not capitalists, thinking we have to grow our money and our money has to keep growing. But they were thinking that ritualized cult stabilize the society, you know, so you have to have strong gods and and the king is in control of the priestly class and in control that apparatus, which I think is one of the main reasons why Israel's asked to resist having a king. Because if you have a king, then you have to build this priestly infrastructure. You have to pay taxes to it. And, you know, all, all this stuff starts to occur. And one of the big ones, which, you know, we get all these juxtapositions at the beginning of that story that, like, David was a good king. And then, you know, basically, David's a really good king because he has no cultic apparatus, like the he has a very soft cult. The only cult that he has is, like the Psalms, you know, like it's, it's, and he always listens to the prophecy, like that. We're getting a very positive David Read. But then Solomon comes about in the Prophet cannot deny some Solomon's Kingdom is great. Like, you know, Solomon is, this is pretty epic, Golden Era kind of experiences. But we then always get these little juxtapositions, you know, like Solomon's, you know, had all these horses and all this stuff, and he was so great, and he married the Pharaoh's daughter and brought, brought her in, you know, so you kind of get both these senses, like, he's really great. You can't deny everything he does, but he also starts to blend the worship of Yahweh with other cultic experiences, because that's what happens, is when you marry someone, she you marry the Kings, another King's daughter, she brings her cultic practices in, and that's what's making more powerful as king, because now you have all these different cultic realities. But Israel doesn't necessarily think that that's a good thing. That starts to break break commandments. But then, of course, you know, the kingdoms come apart, and then we enter into that period where all the resources do go away, you know, we end up in a great drought. And then we get the story of of Ahab. And I always kind of think kings is interesting, because it's like one bad king after another bad king, you know, like, and then you get some profits and some pretty cool stories that you got to go back to every year in Sunday school. But then it's just like one bad king after another bad king. And it really is like the slip down from the golden era down to the other side. And I think there is, like this racing, trying to race back up the downside of this golden era. And that's when I think the temptation for bail worship comes, you know, like when you feel that you're losing something, you feel like, maybe we need to add a little fertility god in. And that's the kind of reading I'm trying to do, is say, like, Well, I think we're you. Kind of on this side as well. But there are these really interesting there. I mean, so I don't go much further than Elijah, really. I mean, I don't really go much into Elisha, but there is this kind of way where Elijah, Elijah is just clearly, like his name means Yahweh is my God. Like, you can't do any syncretism here, you know, like it is we in this this god functions in a very different logic, you know, this God does not respond to accelerated forms of of cultic practice. This God responds to prayers and and humility now granted Elijah, you know, he flexes a little bit too and like, you know, ma is a little bit mocking. But also there's this deep kind of sense where, what does he do? He doesn't dance and do all these cultic activities. He lays, he lays on the ground in prayer, you know? And so I'm just trying to raise this different kind of reading of it, and think about kind of how the dynamics of of from impossibility comes new possibility. And there's something that radiates with the cross ears that when you know for this God, when all is lost, this God moves, because this God doesn't need any doesn't need any human cultic practice to act. This God only needs the humble heart that prays. It only needs, I mean, this is a very Lutheran kind of assertion. It needs not the priest, but the psalmist again, I think, I think some scholars would look like, you can't completely separate those two, because some priests are Psalmists too. You know, obviously in the tradition. But there is a kind of read here that I'm kind of Protestant read even of that story that I'm trying to think of, the one who prays in humility, the one who desires to be embraced by God as Mary embraces her child as the narrative that saves us more than thinking, how can we extract resources?
Joshua Johnson:I mean, it reminds me of this quote that you have from this book, prayer is not a device to be used to manifest and therefore control God. Prayer is a way to be before God in need. And I the picture of, like, fertility gods. I have a picture of, I don't know, of a bunch of people around the president praying for, you know, favor, for for growth, and, you know, for all, all of this stuff instead of being before God in need. How does Elijah give us this example of what what it is to actually pray?
Andrew Root:Yeah. I mean, I do think there's something, you know, I think that's one of the things that's so captivating about that story. And one of the things that's really confusing about it is Elijah somehow ends up like, in the press briefing with with with Ahab and and with Jezebel, you're like, how did he get in there? You know, all of a sudden he's, like, giving a prophetic word, like, it's not going to rain anymore, you know, because of this, it's like, how did he, you know, how is he in there? But there's a certain sense that the prophetic move, I think, and what you also see is that then, then Elijah has to suffer the drought, you know, like, I, I think sometimes what we do, I guess this is the Identitarian in the techno optimist perspective. Like, to your to you, to the story of your picture, or the analogy of your picture. Like, one is the kind of techno optimist things like, how do we get near power and leverage power to get to get the resources we need? And the other is to say, well, I'm going to, it's going to make a big it's going to make a big wave. When I, you know, say something, when I when I confront the when I confront power like this, you know what I mean? Like, then everyone's at least people on my political our side are gonna be like, that's that's great. But there's something interesting in this story where Elijah, like the word the powerful is Woe to you, because the judgment that's coming for you for turning your back on on Yahweh and turning your back on the needy is coming for me too. Like, we're both under under the judgment. We both need God to act for us. So it's not like Elijah says that word and then gets to escape to green pastures and, you know, pineapples he, I mean, he suffers incredible amounts of of of pain and in the drought. And so there is something I think we have to be really wary of. And you can see how the capitalist perspective plays here is like, if you do it right as an activist, or you do it right as a techno optimist, you'll be able to escape drought, you'll be able to escape suffering, you'll be able to escape the cross. And Elijah's really clear you can't do that. To give the prophetic word also means to bring the Word of judgment. Means that judgment comes back on you. And the reason you know God is going to bring a great no is because that no is your no too you know. So you have you know, like I think Elijah says, you know, like when the Prophet says you've forgotten the poor, they also mean, I have forgotten the poor, and woe to me. Like God is judging me too, for for having forgot the poor. And so I do think that there's a way that this moves kind of law, gospel, judgment, grace, that that plays
Joshua Johnson:within this. I mean, at the end, you know, God sends Elijah to a dying Brook and gets fed by the Ravens like, right? He's just laying in in desolation still,
Andrew Root:yeah, and then he sends, and then God sends, after that, God sends him to a mother who's starving to death. And you know, you get this this, you know, the bread just keeps coming. But then the child that's saved by this miracle dies, and this mother, to her credit, is absolutely angry, like, what your God saved me like she her whole plan was to have one last meal with her son, and then they would die together, and at least she was in control of her destiny. And then Elijah saves her, or his God saves her, and then her son dies anyhow, and he feels like this is an utter curse. But then, of course, we get that story that really echoes Jesus' own healing of Jairus daughter, where Elijah goes in and holds the boy, and he lives again and brings resurrection. So you get this whole sense like out of nothingness, death, brokenness, the echo of the cross, this God of Israel moves. This god is this God is not dependent on fertility. This God is dependent actually on the opposite of that. Like, where you can start to anticipate this God will work and move, is where things are desolate, where you are far from a golden era. Like when we're in a golden era, that's where we should start to be a little bit worried. That's when we start to talk like we can get confused here and think that this god functions this way, or that it's us who did this, or something like we can when times are good and who doesn't want good times. I mean, we all want good times, but there is a deep I mean, this is, maybe this is what leads someone like Friedrich Nietzsche to think like Christianity is utter cancerous, you know, because it's a little bit like when things are going good, you better be careful, like, you know, like, but there is something true about that, because this God is a minister. This God is a God who comes in to death and brings life. This is a God who comes to need. This is what this God does. This God cares for the needy. It's a big question for us. We all need to sustain. We all need sustainability and the continuation of our communities. But that can't come in the opposite logic of this God who comes to the needy into the brokenhearted.
Joshua Johnson:I don't know how much hope you're giving me. You're not giving me the hope of the techno optimist or the any optimism in the growth of, like, new movement, or a stable life, or, you know, constant, you know, escalation for the stabilization you're giving me hope in something deeper that's going to be with me in the suffering that I can wait with God in the middle of suffering, which is hopeful in one sense, but, but in this earthly American sense, it just feels totally counterintuitive.
Andrew Root:I Yeah, and I think it's, I think it's ultimate hope. Because really, what it is is you're going to have enough this, this God will give you enough that, you know, like the rain will come, the small cloud will will occur, but it's not going to come from your effort. It's not going to become from your control. It's going to become, it's going to come as pure gift. And so the question is, our community is prepared to receive the gift, the gift of God's presence, the gift of God's act, or are we thinking we got to get our capital in order, and we got to find ways. I mean, there's a certain way that capital itself becomes its own God, because capital can grow itself, you know, like, you know, like, what is? What do we all want? We want our 401, case, to have enough principle in them that they just grow without having to do anything. They're self perpetuating forms of growth. And this is where we're kind of trapped, because none of us can really retire without fiscal capitalism. And it's, it's growth markets, but at the same time, it does start to form us, in a way, to think money is more powerful than God. Capital is more powerful than God because it acts, and your God waits and waits and waits until you are in deep need and then reveals God's self and
Joshua Johnson:saves, yeah. I mean, you turn in your final chapter, you turn to Mary, which and then you argue that the Magnificat, the Mary song, is essentially counter economic vision of the kingdom. This, I think, is a place where maybe I could find, find some hope. What? What What are you saying about about Mary? What can we learn as a anti bail type of posture?
Andrew Root:Yeah, well, I mean, first of all, it really echoes that very different reality where Mary, Mary, it's all about the relationality and not about the extraction of resources. You know. Like this is why, in the tradition, there's something I think, really significant about remembering claiming the creedal claim of the the Virgin Mary. I mean, in many ways, she stands outside the fertility structure. You know what I mean, like the fact that she has this child in her arms as Virgin Mary means that this is pure gift, that this is the act of God, that she's the recipient of the great gift, that she even says the Magnificat, that she's the Blessed One, you know. But there's also something deeply prophetic here, that that Luther, and I'm kind of dealing with luther's commentary on on the Magnificat here that Luther wants to say, and he's writing it to the Elector, you know, like his ruler's nephew, where he's like, God takes those who are high and tears them down and lifts up the lowly, like this is what is happening here, is that those who don't have through this person that is going to be born in the womb of this teenage girl, that the needy will be given what they need, and those who are high will be torn down. And it is. It's an incredible prophetic statement, and Mary teaches us to believe this word, you know, like that's what Luther really wants to do, is extract Mary. Melancthon wants to get rid of me, Mary, you know, Luther sidekiss is like that. There's too much superstition in this. Let's get rid of this. I mean, this is kind of how some Lutherans and some reform people, I think, and and American Protestants feel too is like just that's way too Catholic for us. But Luther doesn't want to get rid of Mary. But he wants to not. He wants to extract Mary out of some cultic system and place her as our teacher, the one who hears the word and responds the true response of faith, this true, faithful one that hears God's word and responds to it and recognizes that God comes to the lowly that God cares for, the lowly, that God comes to the broken heart and then the lost, and that this is What God is going to do for all of creation, that those who who cry and are in pain, God is going to come and minister life to them, and those who have won the gambit of power and of escalating growth, you know, and I think we, we should all fear this, in some sense, all This middle class Americans. God's gonna bring them down. You know that judgment and that grace comes to us through through Mary in that way, but it is this emphasis of the relationality, I think, over the instrumental
Joshua Johnson:well, then speak to the church at the moment, on all sides of us being caught up in all of these fertility idols. One of the things you just talked about is hearing and obeying God's word. Of doing that. How do we resolve to do that? How do we stay faithful to be able to hear and obey?
Andrew Root:Yeah, I mean, there's practices that have to put us and put us there, you know, we have to read the scriptures, which I hope this, this, this book represents, you know, like it actually, you know, lives that out. But we have to learn to be praying people. But there is a deep sense, I think, that what it means to receive that gift is to recognize that at the at the kind of vertical level, there's nothing we can do. There's no way we can fulfill God's ought. God gives us God's grace and fulfills that ought, but once that ought is fulfilled, and this is a very kind of Bonhoeffer Luther kind of perspective, again, you go to your neighbor and you care for your neighbor. So what the church needs to do is exactly what Elijah does, is go to this mother and and be with her. And there's a deep sense of doing that. I mean, I this, there's this line from Luther that's so beautiful, where he says, God doesn't need your good works. God doesn't need them, but your neighbor does. Your neighbor needs her good works. So the question is, can we go to our neighbor to meet Jesus Christ, to meet Jesus Christ, who is with and for our neighbor. But can we do that, not as a form of techno optimism? There's a there's an initiative here that we can extract some goods out of, or as a way of winning likes for our for our form of activism, like, you know what I mean? Like that, being here in the Twin Cities, I watched so many people faithfully act in the in the midst of January and February and all the craziness that was going on. But there are a lot of people who acted and did incredibly beautiful things, and those never went online because they were just being faithful to their community. They were just responding to their neighbors. They weren't thinking, I have to put this online. I have to see how many likes I can get. And I'm not even saying that everyone did that, who did who put stuff on Facebook or whatever, did that because they were thinking, I need to, I need I need to win in the attention economy. I'm not saying that, but I am saying these are the. These are things we have to think about pastorally, like, what is it? What does it mean to keep the primary people that you're responsible to is, is, is the bodies that are before you, the people you've been called to, the the office you bear as their pastor, that those are the primary people you're responsible to, not a bunch of social media people that might feel really good for them to be like, Oh, that's such a great sermon, or what, what a great take. That really helps me think about this. But that is a certain way of playing into the fertility cult, to be quite honest. You know, inside this third industrial revolution of personality capital. So I think this is a big formative question for pastors is like, how do we escape this kind of personality, capital and capitalism? And I think it will probably mean taking steps away from social media, which, you know, performative contradiction, as people are watching this on social media, you know, or from their podcast feed or whatever. I mean, they're these. These are the the tensions we live in. But I think we do people like like us have to really honor the pastor who just walks the road with these people and is simply with and for them, and isn't really concerned about what someone in Wichita, Kansas thinks, or someone and you know, San Francisco thinks they're just simply going to do what's called for, to be with their neighbors and to call their community, to see and be with their neighbors and find Jesus Christ who is with and for our neighbor.
Joshua Johnson:Do you see what was happening in January and February and in the Twin Cities, the community coming together and looking out for one another is, does that continue now? Is it something that we're saying? Oh, this is actually how we live going forward, and it wasn't just for a moment.
Andrew Root:Yeah, I think so. I mean, I do think so. I think that it the intensity is less, therefore the attention is less. It's moved on to other things. But I know a lot of pastors and ministries that are just that they're still walking, walking the road with people and are still being faithful in their neighborhood. And I think there's a lot of people, this is a weird part of the country where you throw a rock, you hit a Lutheran. You know what I mean? It's one of the only places in the country where that's true. But there is a deep sense of what it means to attend to your neighbor. And I do think you saw whether that was just a kind of civic religion, kind of leftover allure of an old kind of 20th century Christendom that was, you know, has been slowly disappearing since 1970 but there was a certain way of frame people's imaginations, you know, so people did stand with their their neighbors, and yet it comes with a lot of complication too, you know? And I hope this book kind of doesn't shy away from the complication, but does call us it's a kind of theology of the cross, growth in light of the theology
Joshua Johnson:of the cross. Well, this is a fantastic book, Baal and the gods of more. It'll be available anywhere books are sold, people could go and get this book and then buy the rest of your books and just, you know, sit with with
Unknown:my sales. Yeah, I'm gonna escalate your growth, just more and more and more. Just buy more. Do more. We just want more.
Joshua Johnson:Andy, I love this. I'd love to get a recommendation or two from you. Anything you've been watching or or reading lately you could recommend.
Andrew Root:Well, we start. We watched the first episode Steve Carell show on HBO, the rooster. I think it's called rooster. Yeah, it was awesome. Yeah. We have the second episode we're gonna watch tonight, but I'm a little bit, like, nervous about watching it, because then we're done, you know, then we got to wait till Sundays for for them to come. But gosh, it seems like it's going to be really good. Yeah, when the pilot is that good, I'm, I'm pretty excited about that.
Joshua Johnson:So anything Bill Lawrence does lately, I mean, yeah, lasso shrinking like, you know, scrubs his back, which he had, and, you know, Rooster, he has a hand in it too. It feels a little, you know, a little bill warranty to me, which I love.
Andrew Root:Yeah, it's, I would we were we really loved it. So, yeah, that would be probably TV show and book, I don't know, like, I just, I'm working on a project, and I picked up an oldie, but a goodie that I think people people need to give a guy by the name of James loader more of a read. And he wrote a book called the logic of the Spirit, which is, it's not an easy read. It's not terribly difficult. It's, he's just a really unique thinker. And I just read that again. I mean, this is like 1998 so you know, I'm not, I'm not breaking anything new here, but he's, he's not been read as much as he should. And so his books, the transforming moment and the logic of the spirit, I think, are worth people finding. Again, great.
Joshua Johnson:Well, once again, Baal and the gods of war will be available anywhere. It's a fantastic book. Thank you so much. Andy, this is a great conversation. Yeah, thanks for having me. You
