Religious Liberty, Natural Theology, and America’s Founding with Dr. Owen Anderson

In an era of rising polarization, what does religious liberty really mean—and why does it matter today? Dr. Owen Anderson, professor of philosophy and religious studies at Arizona State University, joins Will and Josh to unpack the philosophical roots of religious freedom, natural theology, and the moral principles that shaped the American founding. Together, they explore tough questions: How do we define religious liberty in a pluralistic society? Are the ideals in the Declaration of Independence grounded in Protestant theology? What does it mean to protect religious freedom without weaponizing faith for political gain? The conversation also touches on hot-button issues like Christian nationalism, DEI programs, transgender rights, and the complex relationship between church and state. Whether you're curious about the faith of the Founders or wrestling with modern debates about freedom of conscience, this episode offers thoughtful insight into the intersection of faith, philosophy, and democracy.

Guest Bio:
Dr. Owen Anderson is a professor of philosophy and religious studies at Arizona State University and the pastor of Christ the King Church in Phoenix. His work focuses on natural theology, constitutional principles, and moral philosophy, with a particular interest in how religious liberty and moral truth shape democratic societies. He is the author of several books, including Reason, Faith and Faithfulness, The Declaration of God, and a philosophical commentary on the Book of Job.

Resources & Links:
Dr. Owen Anderson’s Website: https://drowenanderson.com
The Declaration of God by Owen Anderson: https://bookshop.org/a/112456/9781107459045

Transcript

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Hey, welcome back, Faithful Politics listeners and watchers. If you're watching on our YouTube channel, we are so glad to have you with us. I'm your political host, we're right. And I'm joined by a guy named Josh. He is your faithful host. I was going to say a God named Josh, because there is a book written called a book called A God Named Josh and A Devil Named Lucifer. Yeah, that would have been bad. Anyways, welcome to Faithful Politics. And joining us today we have with us Dr. Owen Anderson. He is a professor of philosophy and religious studies at Arizona State University, where he specializes in the intersection of faith, reason, and public life with a deep focus on natural theology. I got to ask you about that. It's constitutional principles and moral philosophy. His work also explores how religious liberty, moral truth, and civil religion shape American democracy and has written a few books, including Reason, Faith and Faithfulness and the Declaration of God. And we are just so glad to have you with us, Dr. Anderson or Owen or like. Anderson, Owen's fine. It's really good to be here with you, Will and Josh. I'm glad to get to talk to you today. Yeah, we're really glad to have you here. So natural theology, obviously, I'm the political one, Josh is the faith. I've never heard natural theology before. Can you kind of explain that for me? Yeah, that just means the study of general revelation, which is from the works of God in creation and providence. for example, Romans 1, 18 through 21 summarizes the, we can know the eternal power and divine nature of God from the things that are made. Or later on in Romans chapter 2, it talks about the moral law that we can all know. So those are, that's what natural lost or natural theology studies. And it's interesting, mean, that used to be the name that we now call it philosophy of religion. Well, that used to be what every college student would study at some point, natural theology. Interesting. I never knew that. what inspires a person to dedicate their life to theology, constitutional principles, and more philosophy, which I really love. I like the blending because hopefully we'll get into some discussions about religious liberty and what have you. But why did you choose this path? Yeah, that's a great question and the overlap is interesting. mean, for me, it was kind of organic. I was a high school student raised in, you know, kind of non-dominational evangelical setting. I went to a Juana, went to Young Life and had probably what I think are pretty standard high school student questions. How do know this stuff's true? I mean, my parents told me this, my youth pastor tells me this, but I want to know. And that leads you to questions about like, How does God, how do you God exists or Jesus was real or the resurrection happened? How do we have, do we have free will or not? So all of those were on my mind and I'm talking with them about my youth, with my youth pastor, my parents, my friends. And I found out you can actually study those things in college. So I said, well, there's something called philosophy. I want to do that. But the job prospects are really limited, right? So usually if someone studies philosophy, they're going to go into law and My parents had told me from a young age, you like to argue, you should be a lawyer and make money arguing. So I was kind of always open to that, but I really liked these questions though, more than just arguing for whoever pays me to argue for them. And so I just pursued philosophy. pursued the overlap is obvious to me with history and religious studies. So I pursued those subjects and in God's grace, I was able to get a job as professor and... Been doing that for 25 years teaching this stuff and I really, really enjoyed a lot. That's really cool. You know, I'm a little bit jealous because I love philosophy, but I'm such an amateur philosopher because I haven't been able to really put the time in. you know, I like to think of myself as a philosopher, but I'm really not, dude. I'm such an amateur at it. And I just love talking with philosophers that I'm like, it's like one of those subjects. like, I feel like everyone should learn, have to learn philosophy. say is that we're all amateur philosophers in the beginning, right? Everybody, little kids love asking questions. Where'd this come from? Where'd this come from, right? What is that? Why is that that way? So we're all born that way, asking those questions. And unfortunately, somewhere along the way, we often lose that curiosity. And so a philosopher's job in one way is simply to keep that curiosity alive in myself and my students. Yes, I really love that. And so I just think it's really cool. And thinking about the ideas of natural theology, the ideas of moral philosophy, things that you've studied, constitutional philosophy, those things and how they come together. If I'm thinking about... I just want to get right into this idea of like religious liberty and especially religious liberty in a pluralistic democracy. Like I used to hear said a lot that, well, you have freedom to everyone has freedom to worship how they see fit. And I remember that I would listen to conservative like talk radio, stuff like that, or it's got like Albert Mueller and something would be pointed out well. Worship is not, that's not what we're given freedom for. It's not worship, it's freedom of religion, the free exercise of religion or religious liberty. So help us understand what is religious liberty? How do you define it? How does it operate in our pluralistic society? How is it different from worship? Well, that's a great question because I think it's in the news a lot right now for a number of reasons and both people on the right and the left and then even the super far right, the super far left are arguing about this because we have things like the White House posting on its webpage that Jesus is the son of God. And so, know, people are saying, some people say they didn't go far enough. Other people are saying that's too much. You can't say that on the government page. It even makes them uncomfortable when the president says it personally, but they might say, okay, fine, he's a person, he can have his own religion, but now it's on the government's webpage. And so I find myself looking to what was the purpose and intention of the First Amendment. And that puts me in a zone that I call radically normal. And I like that term because you have the radical right and you have the radical left. So the radical right, what I mean by that is they share a kind of similarity, which is, I would call it in just one term, identity politics. They share that view and the radical right says we need to go back to having a king who makes everyone go to church. And the radical left says no, we're, you know, last year at the White House we, instead of Easter stuff, we had LGBTQ celebrations. We need more of that. And so you have these two extremes and I think the view I'm articulating is just kind of the radically normal view, which is in the middle. I know a lot of people like to claim the middle because it sounds good. That's not I'm doing it. I really think this is what the First Amendment was intended for, which is that the government can say true things. The First Amendment does not prohibit that. It prohibits the government saying a follow-up. If the White House said the following, Jesus is the Son of God, and you will be in church on Sunday, or you're going to be fined and put in prison, and it better be a government church. I'm not talking about a home church. It's got to be a certified church. Now we've got a broken violation of the First Amendment. White House saying, you know, the paragraph it had about Easter from President Trump and his wife Melania, he can say that all at once. That doesn't make you do anything. You know, it's kind of funny, Ashley, like Josh and I often talk about... chaplains, military chaplains, because I'm former military, and we had a great chaplain that was assigned to our unit, especially when we deployed. But chaplains really have the best gig in the world because they can just do ministry and they don't have to fundraise or live off of tides and stuff like that. And I've joked with folks before saying, hey, if you really want to hear the gospel without any sort of like... you know, filter, go watch a chaplain preach, because they're not concerned about whether or not their message is going to, you know, like, keep people from tithing or whatever. So your point about the government church thing was kind of funny. But I do want to sort of agree with you, Ashley, because I wrote this blog or a sub stack the other day about church-state separation, kind of talking about it, uh, kind of from my perspective, we've spoken to a lot of smart people like yourself. And I'm like, hopefully I've learned something over, the years, but, my argument in the church state separation, um, I don't think necessarily dress like the thing you're talking about. Cause I agree. think if, if a president, you know, after every press briefing wants to say a prayer, like, I don't think that's like Christian nationalism. You know, I don't think it's like violating. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, so like. Where I feel like the debate on religious liberty should be, and see if you agree with me, is when we start taking those beliefs and kind of like institutionalize them. Like I had somebody say to me recently, God gave us the gift to choose, but if the government is making those choices for us, then we're essentially taking that away from God. And I'm like, dang, that actually makes a lot of sense. So I'd to maybe get your sense of where is the real religious liberty debate, the real one we should be having? Yeah, I think that's what I love about the United States is I think we're actually the government that followed the Book of Acts. And it recognizes that Christianity is an evangelical religion, meaning that coercive pressure on a person can get them into church, no doubt about it, but it can't make them confess their need for Christ. And so Thomas Jefferson wrote about that, that if you do have an institutionalized church, all you produce are institutionalized hypocrites. Because yeah, they'll go because they don't want to go to jail or get a fine, but they don't believe any of it. And we've seen that happen. people forget that Germany and the UK both have state churches. And these are places that register the highest atheists in the world. So I think it's very important that the First Amendment reflects that fact that yes, the Christians are to spread the gospel and that can't be done through state coercion. However, I disagree with the last 50 years has been on the other side which says you can't even mention it. I you do have those congressional prayers which are very much a matter of tradition and they try to bring in every religion. However, historical truth of the matter is Christianity or the United States came out of Christianity and mostly Protestantism. And so it wasn't just a kind of pluralistic setting. That wasn't the purpose of the First Amendment. I think it was to protect the evangelical nature of Christianity. And so the government can say true things about Jesus, but you're right to be wary of any kind of coercion that comes from that. And I think that the response would be something like this, well, okay, but what if the next president is a Hindu? Can he say, Krishna is the one he should follow? Well, yeah, I think he could, but what you need to follow up with also are sound arguments. I think I could show that that's not true. On the other hand, Jesus is the son of God, that is true. So the government should also model clear thinking. It's not just the opinion of whichever president comes along. but a clear presentation of this is a sound argument that leads us to the truth because that's very important that the citizens of the country know there are true things and you can know them by thinking about them and so the government can model that without coercing any of us. Yeah, you said something about Christianity came out of Protestantism. or the United States came out of a Protestant context. Can you just elaborate a little bit more on that? Just because we do have a mixed audience and me too. That's just not history that I'm familiar with. Sure. Well, so what I mean is you could look at it as a historical matter, like the largest majority of the persons who signed the Constitution, that's their religion. But as a philosopher, I also look at it in terms of the philosophical structure of a worldview or belief system. And the worldview or belief system, morality, politics, out of which those people were operating was Christian theism, meaning belief in God the Creator. and that God made us all equal, gave us all equal rights, and those rights are the basis of our ability to live and cooperate together. And then there's also in the Constitution, for example, the President is given Sunday off. Sunday is the Lord's Day, and you don't work on that day, and so the President has that day off. So there's things like that throughout it where it's not just generic deism, but Christian theism. that's operating and the question really has been the last 250 years has really been a kind of a test to see can you keep equal equal rights and the kind of political government we want but take God out of it and I think the last 50 years have have shown no you end up in things that we don't recognize anymore you logically speaking you've got to have these beliefs to support the kind of government we want You know, that response gives me so many questions. I'm very, very empathetic to what you're saying. Very empathetic. It's funny, like with a lot of the things that I've seen being posted, like from the White House and the Trump administration right now, like 10 years ago, I would have been very happy. Like I would have been like, man, we're winning. This is great. This is awesome. And I got to be honest with you. Like when I look at it now, I don't feel that I feel a lot of concern. feel a lot of like, is this like, almost like, I feel like my deeply held faith is just being used as a political tool, which it has been many times in the past, right? And I don't, and I'm not saying it is, that's not, you know, like you said, you have to make an argument for that kind of thing. But I'm like, I'm feeling that. And I, you know, It's fascinating when you said, you know, they gave Sunday off, like, that's clearly this thing that is a, it comes out of a kind of Judeo-Christian, like, worldview, theistic worldview, even morals grounded in a kind of a theistic worldview. And, like, what do we do with that worldview now, right? Because we aren't in 1776, right? And as much as that was the worldview of the time, and it's still like... majority Christian in America, but that's rapidly shrinking. think it's like 25 % of Gen Z would call themselves Christian at this point. And it's like, that's kind of crazy. There's still like 80 % of the baby boomers, like 50 % of millennials, and then like 25 % or 30 % of Gen Z. And so we see this rapid shift. Why is the religious liberty, what is it going to look like, do you think, in the next 10 years? Why is it so important? Why should anybody listening to this right now care about religious liberty? Why should they be concerned about letting people have these ultimate and ultimate questions? Yeah, there's two things there I think that are great to look at. The first one was your initial kind of feeling that, is my religion being used by government to promote itself? And that's always the problem. That's another one of the good reasons that you want a good clear separation between church and state. And so let's say somebody doesn't like President Trump's policies about tariffs. Well now is Jesus implicated somehow? Like Jesus is for tariffs? And so that's always the danger, right? Yes. a mature person can keep those differences in mind and know that Christians have been in different political parties and they can disagree about economics and yet a president should be able to also still have a religion. So those are, you know, more complex thinking. It takes a little more maturity to not just say, oh, I guess Jesus loves tariffs. I'm out of here. But it's always a problem you got to watch out for. And it raises another problem about the difference between institutions. And I find when I talk to Christians, I haven't done a poll about this, but it seems very rampant. The Christians don't understand the institution of the government or politics or the civil magistrate was the older term and they confuse it with the church quite often. So in other words, they're doing the reverse of what you're worried about. They're saying the people in the government need to be pastors and they need to act like pastors. And the truth is those are different institutions. They both are founded on Christ. So both of them can be have Christian expressions. But the work of politics is notoriously dirty. know, politicians liken it to making sausage. You you like the sausage, but don't look at the factory. You don't want to look at how they make it. And so politics is like that. It's very rough. It's very dirty. You got to go to war sometimes. You have to threaten people with stuff. And you wouldn't imagine a pastor doing that. It would be really weird, right? And so I think part of that response is just getting those two categories distinct. Will mentioned being in the military. There's no church military where we send it out to, know, the Calvinists to go after the Armenians. But that was a thing in the past, right? And that's one of the reasons we have the First Amendment. And so the government does have military though, and you have to use the military sometimes. And I find Christians almost sometimes saying there shouldn't be a government. We should just passively allow anyone to trample over us because that's what Jesus means about sacrificial love. And so they have a hard time understanding the whole institution of government. But to the last thing you mentioned about the shift in demographics, I don't think it matters because that's why I said this is a logical problem. Let me give an example of Hinduism. I mentioned Hinduism. And one of the secretaries, I don't remember which one was sworn in on the Bhagavad Gita. Now that is a Hindu text. It's a pantheist text that teaches all is one. All is one. Now if all is one, then good and evil are one. There's no distinction between the two. And You can see how this would have serious ramifications for how a society lives, operates, how it understands government. On the other hand, if God the Creator is real, the Declaration of Independence is correct, then there are some good things because God made them. And there are other evil things because God commanded against them. And so you have a clear difference of what's good and what's evil on which to build a government. And so those are real differences. And in India and the West, know, things look a lot different because they've developed along those different lines. So just to say, well, what if tomorrow 80 % of Gen Z converse to Hinduism? Well, we'd have the First Amendment right to do that. But what would the implications be? It'd be a very different country, for sure. That's a really interesting point. I'm curious about, so you mentioned the bug of Vaad Gita, which I'm not familiar with at all. So like your characterization of it, I'm just going to accept because again, I... religious book. So it's not fair to do in 10 seconds, but I'm just doing a quick quick expression. I were writing a paper about the Bhagavad Gita and I needed one thing to know about it, that would be the thing. But I would get an F on the paper, right? So you'd also mentioned that a bunch of young people decided to adopt a different religion like that one. think you're sort of implying that who knows what we're going to have? But what we do have right now in America, anyway, is like a majority Christian country. And I've often wondered, how can we have so many Christians in this country, but yet all the problems we have? And this isn't necessarily like a, does God let bad things happen? This is more of a, go ahead. against Christianity. I can imagine another country looking in and saying, in their mind, they may not know it's 60-40%. They might say that's a Christian country. They might think it's mostly Christian. And I guess Christians behave that way. I've seen their media, their TV, their videos is pretty lewd. And we don't want that in our culture. So we don't want to be Christians. So it is a big problem, I think. I think it comes down to the problem of discipleship. and that through the centuries, Christians have confused discipleship, conversion, and also self-identifying, because those are all different. So in other words, the pollster might ask a kid, what are you? And the kid says Christian, because they go to church with grandma. They've never even converted, though. But that's just what they tell the pollster. So then you might have someone who's a convert to Christianity. They've confessed, you know, I need Christ as my savior. And they believe they're a Christian. But they're not a disciple. They're a baby Christian. which Paul talks about in Hebrews 5, right? They're still on milk. And you could stay a baby Christian your whole life. You could be 80 and you just don't get, you know, very complex Christian ideas. And then there's discipleship, which is what the church is supposed to do, which is make people disciples obeying all the things that have been commanded by God. And over the centuries, Christians have generally relied upon calling a nation Christian. So the king would convert, the king of some, you know, some pagan European place, the church would come up from... from Rome, convert them, and the king would say, we're all Christians now. And the people would say, we're all Christians now. They have no idea what that means. And many times they were accommodated. We'll just replace your statue of Thor with a statue of St. Bartholomew. But you don't have discipleship going on. And so when I read things about how, this used to be Christian Europe and now it's not, I kind of still shrug my shoulders. Like, was it though? I mean, were they discipled? Doesn't seem like it. point. You know, I'm curious, and this is just changing gears a little bit just because you're a smart person and I don't get a chance to ask a of smart people this question. So when you're talking about the founders earlier, you're talking kind of on the edges about their beliefs. I'd love for you maybe just to kind of unpack that a little bit more and then explain. either advocate for or against this idea that we are a Christian nation based on the faith of the founders. Yeah, well, always comes, you know, as a philosopher, it always comes down to, it depends what you mean. So we don't, I try not to be like, you know, tedious, like, it depends what you mean, but that's the truth of it, right? What do mean by Christian nation? Well, we do have a little bit of diversity, but not a lot. What's the founding fathers? We do have a couple of guys who are Roman Catholic, mostly Protestant, and yet then people will raise a question though, what was Thomas Jefferson really a Christian? I mean, isn't he just a deist? So let's even grant that. Let's say, okay, then maybe a couple of deists, but But even then it's still mostly Protestant Christians, and even the deists and the Roman Catholics are operating out of very many shared assumptions about reality. There wasn't anybody who was just advocating for like Marxist atheism, although I know there wasn't Marxism yet, but you know, something like that where they're just a pure materialist. And so because of that, you have these ideas about the nature of authority, that there really are good things and there really are bad things. and that the government is supposed to protect us from outward crime and harm. You really see it summarized in the preamble of the Constitution, the things that government is supposed to do. And those are different things than what the Church does. And that's also another important part of the Protestant background, is that those aren't the same. There's nobody in reality like the Pope, according to Protestants, where both of those combine into one and he's in charge of both, which was what happened in medieval Europe and early modern Europe. The Pope was in charge of both of those things. The King of England tried to do that as well and he still called the head of the church. So he tried to also be one person who's in charge of both. But the Americans said those are separate institutions. Of course they overlap in that they're both under Christ, but they have different things that they do. And so once you get to a culture that says we're just materialists, you lose that. And you really have some, it's not surprising to me that we don't know how to define woman. because in a purely evolutionary, not theistic evolution, but purely evolutionary materialist model, a lot of the values and things that we take for granted just don't make sense. And so a kid raised in that context will begin to ask questions that maybe the adults didn't. They were, they're also atheists, but they went to church with grandma enough to have a little bit of Christian background, and they understand men and women are different. But the kid who's just raised as a Marxist atheist, We'll say, should I care about those things? That's just from the Bible. And we're a product of evolution, not the Bible. And so we begin to question even the basic things of reality. Because isn't the difference between boy and girl pretty basic? I mean, isn't that kindergarten level? That's like first day of kindergarten. All right, there's the boys, there's the girls. The girls say of the boys that the boys have cooties. The boys say of the girls that girls have cooties. And they do their best to avoid getting cooties, right? But now we can't even do that. We don't even know what those are anymore. and that's a kindergarten level thing. So I think that's the kinds of examples that come up when you lose this philosophical foundation. Yeah, I mean, I definitely am very sympathetic to your argument there. I know that there's a lot of listeners that would take, they might take offense or they would take issue with that statement, that it's clear, that it's kindergarten level. I, although I want to, I think that's a good conversation to get into. I'm really curious. if you know, I you might anticipate what they'd ask. I'm open to talking to them. no, I probably will might be a little better equipped to anticipate what they, mean, honestly, because he just has more friends that are transgender or in that kind of camp. So I think he knows, like I know people, but I don't have anyone that's really close. It's kind of one of those like, it's almost like a fault. Like I feel like I should know people, especially. if I'm gonna make judgments about that. I mean, not that that has to be, because I can look at the facts, I can look at things and I can, yeah, personalize it, right? But. think minimally, even someone who's on the transgender side of the debate would agree, this is a new debate that we're having in the 2010s and 2020s that we didn't have before. So in other words, something changed. Everyone would agree with about that. Some people might say it changed for the better. People can now be more free to express themselves. Other people might say it changed for the worse because we've lost basic categories that keep society together. But either way, I think that would be a common ground to say, something happened, something's different now. And it can't simply be sexual differences because we've always had those. We know there were Saturn Elias thousands of years ago, right? So it wasn't as if everybody until the 19 teens was just being a male and a female sexual union. So this stuff's been around forever. But what happened? What was different? So that's part of what I'm trying to articulate is these are... boy, girl, male, female, these are in terms of humans, very simple things. Even the transgender philosophy, I think, would accept that because they would say, I'm now changing to the other one. And if you don't know what the other one is, if you don't know how to define it, then what are you changing to? Well, the other one, what is that? The other one, right? So, yeah. So you have to have definitions of what they are, and then you have to talk, are you talking about changing? biologically, well, that's not possible in terms of every one of our cells has things encoded in it. Are you talking about changing maybe for some outward appearances and there's different levels of that. could simply be you put on makeup and a dress. It could be that you have parts of your body altered as well, but that doesn't do anything really biologically. You don't all of sudden become able to be the other one. So then that's more about why they say that's not sex, that's gender. and gender is a social or cultural expression. And there's some truth to that, right? There's latitude about how cultures understand what a man does and what a woman does, and there's overlap between them. But it's still predicated on the biological differences. What does a what do? What does a woman do in your culture? What's a woman? Well, so you've still got the same problem. So it's always coming back to there's those two differences. And I saw something recently about, oh, was Saturday Live last week. People were shocked. because they did a skit that seemed conservative. And so it was a skit where they were kind of making fun of two gay men who had a baby and they were in a couples group and the other couples were saying, where'd you get the baby? And it was felt out of place for Sarah Lyle. Like, what are you guys doing? But the gay guys were kind of surprised. Like, why are you asking that? And well, where's the mom? One of you could be the dad. Maybe neither one of you is the dad, but one of you could be. But neither one of you is the mom. Where's the mom? And the guys are like, well, I guess I'll be the mom. I'm a little more feminine than he is. No, that's not what we're wondering, right? And it's not just the other couples. The child's going to grow up. And every child will say, who's my mom and dad? Right? And once this kid takes biology class, they'll come home and they'll say, wait a minute, guys. One of you is my dad, maybe, but where's the mom? I just learned about this in fourth grade. I want to know what happened. And why didn't she raise me? Every orphan wonders that, Where was my other parent? Why? What happened? Maybe they died. But maybe they didn't want me. Maybe they gave me away. What if they sold you? They gave me away for 60 grand. Hmm. Every child in that situation is going to have to existentially deal with that as they grow up. And I don't think our culture has really put any thought into that yet. Yeah, mean, these are like super deep questions. So, I want to take us back to religious liberty for a moment, because it is connected to the transgender issue. And I have a lot of thoughts on that as well. don't, like, Will and I don't normally get, like, we don't normally go real, real deep into our own thinking. I mean, we'll say what we think. We'll say... we'll give some ideas, but we don't like go into depth. And so this might be a really good thing, like even well, at some point, like we do one of our point of views on this or we do like sub stacks. I just talking to him about that, but it's like something it's a really good yes. And that's what we want to do. And that's what we want to bring out. But I holding this just here in tension for a minute. When it comes to religious liberty, Because you've made some claims that again, I feel a lot of connection with what you're saying. But these questions about thinking about religious liberty, some of the statements you made, like America has essentially grown out of this theistic view, like the idea that a Hindu worldview would not have produced America, essentially. is kind of what I hear you saying. In terms of result, mean, I know that counterfactuals are always dangerous to get into, so it could have produced something like that. But that kind of... the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence, right? Specifically those things. yeah, yeah, the Constitution, like it's hard to imagine. Like it has this underlying thing, even if it's not said all the time, you see it, like it's the soil out of which it grows. And so we have to figure out like how, what differences that soil make. But what is that soil? Now again, I know that we say Christian worldview, but I would love to even go even deeper into that. Like what is religious liberty? based on? is its rational basis? And how does then that mean that it can extend to all people, not just Christians? Or should it only extend to Christians? first question, what is natural theology? Because my book on the Declaration of Independence is about, especially this sentence, we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unambiguous rights. So that means that we're all created. There is a Creator. And that's the soil that we're talking about. It grows out of. Because we're created, God declares we're equal because we're made in His image. We're not equal for any other reason. If you look around a group of people, none of them are equal. Even if some of them are twins, like you have identical twins, once they're adults, they're very different people. And so, in one sense, we're not equal. But in the most important sense, God says, you're made in my image. And that image especially has to do with the ability to understand. We can enter into that kind of relationship with God that is not the same as owner a pet. It's... we're in his image so we can know God and be relationally in contact with God. And that's true for all humans. And an important part of the biblical teaching is that all nations will be blessed through what God is doing in Abraham. And so that basis, all the things I've just said are all theistic things. You might say some of that's Jewish, yeah, or Judeo-Christian, because I mentioned Abraham and the Christians hold to Abraham also. But then when you look at the other texts of other world religions, you could... even just pick one that's not in existence so no one feels they're picked on like the Roman beliefs. Zeus doesn't make everyone equal. There's different people groups and Zeus rules over one of them and he has to kind of do the best he can because he's not eternal, he's not infinite, he's finite and limited to kind of help the Romans along. And they're in conflict with the Carthaginians because they're ruled by Hera. And so you have all these little people groups differences ruled by different gods and so the Declaration of Independence says none of that's true. There's one God who created all of us. On that basis, we can have equality. And on that basis, we can have a legal system. Because another problem that comes up is many religions have caste systems in which your legal standing depends on what caste you were born into. It can go from you have no legal standing at all to you get to decide. You're at the top. You decide what anybody else is. And we don't like that as Americans. Whenever that comes up, for, let's say with the wealthy, it bothers us, and it should. Because that's the closest you'll get in our culture to a caste system, which is a wealthy person can hire a better lawyer, get the media on their side, and maybe change the way the court works. So we don't like that, and rightly so, because we recognize everyone should be equal. The Bible says, do not show preference to the wealthy, and do not show preference to the poor. Law is applied equally to everybody. So those are examples of that soil you're talking about, and it's not only biblical, it's also natural theology. Yeah, I want to just go back and kind of close on the trance stuff, just to kind of ask you a question that... I know a lot of Christians probably struggle with. With regards, so like when we were talking about transgender people, you you had mentioned male, female, boy, girl, kindergarten, stuff like that. And I get it. Like, I can't answer those questions. I'm not a trans person, you know, like nor nor will I will I try to answer any of those questions here. But but they are questions people have and they are questions that folks. are having to contend with with their children and relatives and stuff like that. I got into a conversation with somebody recently who wasn't necessarily all that on board with the trans stuff. They started talking about puberty blockers and all kinds of other stuff. And I said, if the government banned puberty blockers for kids, you're going to affect more than just trans people. Um, so like my oldest had a brain tumor. Um, he's like 12 now, God, should know this, but like, but, but, uh, he, um, he was diagnosed with it when he was like nine, went through 15 months of chemo. Um, it's done in his group and, essentially like, like the doctors were thinking about putting him on puberty blockers. Like, and I remember like my wife and I talking about it, like, I'm just like, Like we were cool with whatever doctor like was recommending because we had a really great doctor. But we understood that puberty blockers were just a very sensitive, like hot button topic, you know, and if, and if people knew that we were giving puberty blockers to our child who was not trans, like we, yeah, we would, we would get like, like demonized. So with that said, I w I love for you to kind of help Christians kind of rationalize. How do you express a view? that about a particular people group. And also still be able to shine Jesus when you're having those conversations. I I read this morning there was like 850 anti-trans bills that have been proposed since the year started. if you're a trans person and a trans Christian and you have a Christian group, pushing for these bills, you know, like you got to be feeling pretty alone right now, I'd imagine. So I'd love for you to just... and your guy to show really is what embodies that. You guys are showing in your podcast what it's like for two people who disagree about many things to be able to speak civilly to each other and with respect. And you also both said something very important, which is, I would want to know what that person says. And those are really good values. would also, as a philosopher, I agree 100%. And also as a pastor, I agree 100%. So, you say that you want to get to know people as people, not as objects on a statistic or as a news article. These are human beings who are made in the image of God and have inherent dignity, no matter what their religion is. whether the, you know, we've, we've talked about a handful of religions. mean, the ancient Roman who worshiped Zeus, he was there in Palestine hearing the apostles, right? So he has human dignity. And one of them, one of them told Jesus, don't even have to come to my house because I know who you are, I know. So Romans can convert. I'm taking that as a generic example so no one can say, hey, now my feelings are right because I'm a Roman, I worship Zeus. But I think that's the main thing, right? Is that Christianity does afford human dignity to everybody and we should get to know people as humans and never just kind of steamroll over them. But what happens, you when we're having conversations like this, we necessarily have to kind of summarize, be to the point, or we'll be here for eight hours. So you kind of just specifically say, here's the things that this view says, and here's the argument why we think they're incorrect. So with this idea, I would love to get more of your thoughts on what's happening with DEI right now and what, maybe if you could help us think through, when it comes to DEI and all the things that we're hearing. like about like some people are saying well they're absolutely horrible they're racist they're they're taking this away what's wrong with them this is just a sign that they're trying to enslave everyone who's not brown, I mean, who is not white, and anyone who's a different skin color, like they're trying to make them second class citizens, and all that. It's like I've heard that kind of thing. I've also heard people just being upset about it. Well, why can't we just, you know, be, you know, more inclusive, more what's wrong with that? We want to hear more voices. I've heard people that absolutely love it. They're like, this should have been done a long time ago. It was wrong. Even calling DEI racist itself. and even like saying like it's just like Marxist or racist or you know trying to control it's just a tool of control that the government used. How does someone come to this and even I would I want to hear your thoughts but even as a philosopher and critical thinker how do you come to this issue of DEI and even start to even start to parse it out to even understand what we're talking about to even make a to make a decision or form an opinion about it. Yeah, well then that's a great general question, right? How do we as Christians come to any subject to form a good opinion about it? Because one thing that comes to mind of what you said, Will, is that not only is it puberty blockers, but there are some Christians who think Big Pharma is bad in general. So if Big Pharma said, hey, you should get measles, mumps, rubella shot, they would say, no, thank you. So that's really, that's a good example, right, of how do we relate to healthcare as Christians or scientific advances. when we feel like, but now you're giving my kid 100 shots. It used to be three shots. What's going on? So I think that those are kind of overlapped, right? And DEI is another one where, in my experience, and I think this is the key is, what have different people experienced in DEI? Someone might have experienced it simply as a one-hour session about how to get along with people who disagree at work. All right, that's great. But in my experience, it wasn't that. It was the case where my employer made us go through training that gave us a specific interpretation of US and Christian history and said that the Christians and the Americans are structurally inherently white racists. And you need to believe that as part of this employee training. And I don't think the public is told that side of it when they're told, no, you now they don't want to be inclusive. No, I would hope everyone wants to be inclusive. We live in a pluralistic society. There's no way you can not work with people who disagree with you about something. And the bigger your employer is, the more they're going to have to have some ways of teaching employees to get along. Because you don't want have perpetual, like a line outside of HR because everyone's fighting all day. But that's not what my experience of DEI was. And that's why it gets called Marxist is because it's a very standard Marxist interpretation of Christianity put into these employee trainings. So that it's not new. In other words, didn't get invented in 2020. This is what the Marxists have always said about Christians. and why they reject Christianity altogether. And so that's the problem is the forward face, the public face says this is just about inclusion. Good. What's going on is much, much more. So, okay, I know, I just texted Will and said, hey, it's you. But I'm just, guess, to ask the next question. But I guess, I'm thinking, what is it about what was being taught that was so wrong in what you said or incorrect? Because the Bible has been used for terrible things. right, to justify terrible things, it seems to me, unless I'm missing something, right? And that's why we do this, so that people that know more can say, hey, but have you thought about this? Have you seen this evidence? Have you seen this data? So what was it about it? So how was it teaching you, like, what was the story that the Marxists have been saying? What was that story and why is it wrong? Yeah, that's a great question. So the quick answer is it was teaching that some people are inherently bad based on their skin color. And that's by definition illegal. That violates both state and federal law. can't say, if you have this skin color, you're inherently bad. So that's just not the tool. In this case, it was. that's just reversing it from 100 years ago. Anytime you say moral goodness or badness is connected to your skin color, now you're in racism. And so the ones I've seen, not just the one I went through, but other examples I've seen, get into that. get into passing moral judgments based on your skin color. But then the Marxist question, the bigger question is, what the Marxists have always done is critiqued the West based on power struggles. So as materialists, concerns about like the truth of things get turned into who's in power. And they'll say whoever's in power determines what is or is not true. Not just the perception of what's true, they determine what is or is not true. And so we want our group, the Marxists, to be in power. And the way to do that is by critiquing the other guy's power as being unjust or bigoted or somehow problematic. And it's often based on some truth, like you said, but the truth becomes so small that it's covered with so many other either lies or distortions that it's no longer even historically helpful. So just a quick example about Russia. whatever the Tsar did, paled in comparison to what the Soviets did. So if the early communists had some legitimate complaints about their Tsar, within 30 years they'd murdered so many people that the Tsar looks like Santa Claus. Right? And so you have this quite often that you'll have the other guys are these terrible tyrants who did X, Y, and Z, but you overlook what the Soviets have done, or in our case, let's pick, you know, they'll say, well, United States was built on original slavery. Well, that was there, there's no doubt about it. But it was also true that the majority didn't want that in the Constitution and fought, did various things, peacefully fought for sixty plus years until then there was a violent war to end it and say this is wrong and it was on Christian principles that this is wrong. The Confederates who use pieces of the Bible to say, no, this piece seems to justify slavery, that's unsound, that's incorrect understanding of that text. So it wasn't just the one side. You got to show the whole picture and what a significant turmoil that was and how it was that Christian process that brought about international bans on slavery. So that's what happens is you'll just get that little piece of it. Thomas Jefferson wanted slavery in there. Yeah, that one. No, you only get you only get the side of it's only structurally racist. Now that might be, you could say, it's responding to the old days where you only got good things. No one talked about the bad stuff. They just talked about, hey, look at how great Thomas Jefferson was. They never talked about that he owned slaves. So he's like, yeah, but you don't want to correct it by then doing the opposite mistake. You want to show real people how they're fallen sinners who need Christ, the mistakes they make and the good things they do. You know, that's interesting. And I want to find some opportunity for us to agree. And I think we actually agree on a lot more than we probably disagree. Because if there's a book out there that kids, no matter what age, you know, pick up and makes it makes them feel like bad about themselves. Like I'm all in favor. Like let's get them out. There's a there's a place for that, you know, like but like my my my kids who are in fifth and third grade, part of every week they go to the library like their school library. They get to pick out a book and then once a week we do this like reading with Ronan. That's my youngest. where a third grader, he'll just read whatever book he's got. The most recent one was like, a dinosaur took a poo or something like that. So anyways, I say all that because I don't want my kids to go into their school library, pick out something, and then I have to have a really uncomfortable conversation. That's fair. age dependent, yeah. Exactly. And I think those cases, and I could be wrong. I didn't read the statistics, but I foresee those cases being sort of fringe, one-off, very maybe geographically situated. But then on the other side, and this is going to sound funny because I used to be on a DEI committee. one of our first meetings, a lot of the folks the committee. We're talking about like, know, LGBTQ stuff, people of color, stuff like that. I'm the only black guy in the committee, the way. I said, you know, if this committee is going to last, you know, the demographic change in this country is going to be such that white people are going to be the minority in like 2050 or 2040 or whatever. It's right around that time. I was like, that we do in this committee has to apply to them. Because otherwise, like this committee has no no teeth, you know, we're just we're just pushing, you know, whatever is politically advantageous right now. was like, but if you really want to do a good job and and I say that because I'm married to a white woman. One of my kids looks white. The other one is is tanning. He's he's probably not as dark as I am, but but he's going to be. And and he always tells his brother that he's not black. It's a whole lot. And we're just like, well, you know, and that's a weird conversation to have too, to tell like a white kid, you know, and we're just like, well, genetics, you know, okay, you're more, you know, and whatnot. But I love for you just to kind of maybe talk about, you know, if you can make an argument for DEI, what would be your best argument for DEI? Yeah, I would say that the idea, like the best idea of DEI, the one that wasn't, because even you said politically advantageous. Like as soon as it turns into politically advantageous for either side, we've got a problem. So this one might be responding to people on the right who did politically advantageous things. So they'll say, well, now it's our turn. Okay. That's only going to lead to the same problem. So that'll be the first thing is this is not political. This is about, and if it's in an employment situation, it's about our job. You can't overstep into people's personal lives and say what they should do in their personal lives. It's just about at work, let's learn how to respect each other because we have some very deep differences. it's bigger differences than maybe 60 years ago, the differences were a Lutheran and a Roman Catholic have to work together. Well, they seem to be much bigger differences than that. So if that's the idea, I think that makes 100 % sense. mean, every employer, like I said, they're going to want to do that just from the money saving side because they don't want HR departments to get so big because there's so many problems. And so that's why I said a show like your guys's is a great model of that. People who can otherwise disagree about some things, being respectful and working together and getting the job done. Now you said you're in the military. I have a son in the military. So I suspect the military does that as well from what I've heard. You've got a lot of people with a lot of differences, but we need to go do this job. Let's get on the same page and do it. So in that sense, DEI I think is practical. and make sense. But like I said, so I got to talk to people. The ones I've experienced might be different than what you've experienced. And the ones I experienced were not about that. They were definitely this other politicized one. Yeah, that's like, it's one of those things to me that it's so important because words are used in such unclear ways, right? And they're used to, cause like you said, who doesn't want to be included? know, or who isn't, I mean, there are some people that wouldn't be for inclusion. I say who doesn't. In general, yes. to get as many students as possible. An employer wants to sell as many things as they can and they want to hire the best people for their job, which means it's going to be diverse. Yes, absolutely. And I think that getting really clear about definitions is super important. That's one of the first things you do in any kind of philosophical investigation. You get clear about what you're talking about. when I'm thinking about, and this is just a question I'd love to get your thoughts on, because when I'm thinking about, you gave the example of Thomas Jefferson. And now someone's like, look at Thomas Jefferson and he was a slave holder. And so essentially, Thomas Jefferson says, because he's a slave holder, again, and tell me if this is a wrong caricature, know, almost a caricature representation of this argument, because he's a slave holder, it's almost like that you can't trust his moral judgment in anything. Anything else? Yeah. And you can't, and probably then that spreads to you can't really trust his writings, the principles, the things that are coming in. And then you can take that, you can apply that to any of the founding fathers with slave. I don't know how many slaves versus didn't. weren't because they signed the Constitution that had it in there. Yes. So you're absolutely right. They signed the constitution that had it in there. So what's wrong with that argument? Is there something wrong with that argument? I mean, I kind of feel like there is, but I haven't ever articulated it. What's wrong with that argument? What's going on there? It's, it's technically, it's logically wrong, technically, logically wrong, but also it's, something we all have to grow out of. And let me explain what I mean. It's largely wrong because somebody who, on the one hand does something terrible, let's say he's, there's an adulterer. He can also believe some true things. Like if he says two plus two is four, he's right. Right? You, you don't say, well, but, but you're an adulterer, so two plus two can't be four. So logically it's, it's called the genetic fallacy or an ad hominem, meaning the person who said it. If they're a bad person, it's not true. Or if you can trace the belief back to a person who's bad, it's not true. And I think it's an unfortunate way to do any kind of history because you want to teach the students how to think about why is it true, not who said it. So yes, Thomas Jefferson said this, but it's not true because he said it. If you take that, philosophy that says he's a great, he's one of the smartest people ever, believe what he said. Well, that's not helpful either because Why did he think that? Like, what arguments did he have? So you want the students to know that, not just that he's like a perfect person or he's an evil person, but then the growing up part is all of us come to a place in life. Usually it's like late teenagers where we find out that the people we looked up to are imperfect people. And in fact, this is where Simon Freud says, this is the origin of religion. When you realize this about your dad, and that's why you project a God in the heavens who's perfect. But we all have that experience. And so it could be your parents. Many times that is. That's how the teenager starts rebelling and asserting their identity as they see things wrong with their parents. But it's also true for heroes we have. You grow up and you find out some guy you really liked. man, he had how many mistresses? You find out and it just kind of, I don't view him the same way anymore, but he still said some true things. And so life is like that, right? mean, life is complex like that. It's not a simple Disney story. where there's these guys are good, these guys are bad, we do it. So I think that's another part of it is just, people are sinners. Even the heroes that you have. I love that you said that because as you were talking, I'm in the process of working on a substack that's probably going to get me canceled by those in my party. But it's somewhat tied to the whole Bill Maher Trump fiasco. I know Bill Maher got beat up quite a bit from his visit. I don't really watch Bill Maher. I mean, you know, I'm sort of like an armchair quarterback here, but I don't disagree with this message. And I don't disagree with his characterization of Trump because like, heck, mean, like we've spoken to quite a few people that have worked with Trump, worked in his orbit, you know, Kevin Roberts, Stephen String, one of his spiritual advisors. It's escaping me, Leon Benjamin. Like, we've spoken to people in his orbit. And they've all said something pretty similar, like, hey, yeah, he's pretty charismatic, you know, like, so. what we were saying earlier. Get to know the person. Exactly. Now, you can hate the dudes, ideas, policies, tariffs, what have you, but I think when we get into the situation, when we start dehumanizing the person that holds those ideas, then it's really difficult to find common ground. So I just want to thank you for at least just bringing that up because I agree with you. I think it's right. Well, and I, know, in our lived experience, this might be the worst it's been. Let's say George H.W. Bush didn't do this to Bill Clinton and vice versa. So in terms of our, what we've lived through, but the truth is it's been this way in American politics at other times also. Thomas Jefferson wrote anonymous articles that were very slanderous about John Adams. Adams thought they were best friends. Right. And so that's pre-nasty. got shot, didn't he? Yeah, you got shot. mean, it's pretty nasty stuff going on. in the one sense, yes, this is new. goes through, maybe it goes through cycles, and this is one of the bad side of the cycle we're on. I don't like it. I don't like the dehumanizing of both sides, the inability to speak to each other without likening the other person to some horrible monster from history. But at the same time, it probably does represent that there's some very different philosophies going on. And what we need are people like you guys who can articulate those and say, these are the ideas. that we're debating. Get past the personal stuff. Don't insult people. This is what's actually at the heart of it. Yeah, let's go after ideas, not people. I, at least in terms of like it's wide dissemination and trying to understand policy and trying to understand culture. really, I really liked that. I would love to give you an opportunity to talk about your books here. I you've written some books and even how people can connect to your work and what you have going on next. Yeah, I appreciate it a lot. I'm currently a pastor of Christ the King Church, which is a reformed church here in Phoenix. And so you can find our website, Christ the King. It's ctkaz.org. And then I'm a professor of philosophy and religious studies at Arizona State University. So you can go to ASU's webpage. You'll see my CV. But I also try to keep my social media stuff pretty consistent. Dr. D.R. Owen Anderson. So you go to drowenanderson.com. That'll list all of my different articles and books and speaking engagements. And then if you go to Twitter or Facebook public, you'll see those, that same thing. So some of the work that you mentioned, I think like Declaration of Independence of God is interesting, but I've also done some other stuff like I wrote a philosophical commentary on the Book of Job. And I think that one really interests people, Christian or non-Christian, because even non-Christians like the Book of Job. It's kind of a puzzle to everybody. but it's definitely about the thing we all care about, which is why does God let there be suffering? And so that's one of my favorite books of the books I've written. Well, that's awesome. Owen, thank you so much for coming on the program with us. I could keep talking to you. I know we're already at like an hour, so we try to keep it around there. But I could keep talking to you, and maybe we'll connect again. that's great. So thank you so much for coming on the program. I really do appreciate it. And so do our listeners. And to our listeners, guys, thank you so much for jumping in. Again, joining us for another episode of Faithful Politics. Make sure that you guys are liking, subscribing, hack the algorithm so that we can get this great content out. I mean, this is like thought provoking stuff. This isn't your normal, you know, dinnertime conversation. This is the kind of stuff that's going to get you thinking and wondering and questioning. And that is all good. And we want to keep bringing that content. So please. Share this, like, subscribe, check out Dr. Owen's stuff. Just be involved, take that next step. And we appreciate you guys couldn't do this without you. And until next time, keep your conversations not right or left, but up. God bless, guys.