#GruntGod ep.3: Russell Johnson
The third installment of a revolutionary exploration of faith and service.
Transcript
Introduction
📍 Good morning and welcome to Grunt Works. My name is Brother Logan Isaac, and I'm broadcasting from beautiful Albany, Oregon, the home to the latest veteran owned and operated bookstore, the chapter house. We're gonna be soft opening for locals here in September and November 11th, we're gonna be doing our grand opening.
It's gonna be the conclusion of Grunt God season past the re release. The re-release of God has grunted more good news for GIS and this paperback. So I hope you'll join us. But I say that at the top of this episode because this is gonna be a really good one with Russell Johnson of the University of Chicago.
Russell and I go way back. We met when I first started my first graduate theology degree at Duke and we've been really close ever since. He's been an incredible conversation partner sounding board and just a super all around great guy. And I say that because we're about to have a conversation about policing in America and how it relates to Joshua and the person, Joshua, the son of none, and the book of Joshua.
The sixth book of the Bible, the first book after Torah, or the Pentitude, the first five books, the Bible and Joshua was really important. Not only because. Christ is named after Joshua, and that's his anglicized name. There's no difference. Yehoshua in the Hebrew became Jesus in the or. Yes, in the.
Jesus in the SEP two, again, the Greek old, the Greek Hebrew scriptures, and then in the fourth century to Rome when he was translating to Latin, said we need to differentiate between these two Joshuas. And so he makes it Jesus. And then we have Jesus ever since, but. Every time you say the Messiah's name, his name is Joshua.
And that's a hard pill to swallow if you're progressive and you don't like the violence in the Bible. And part of the comment I make with Russell during the episode is that's indicative of a problem we have, especially in the English speaking West. And especially in America. Joshua represents, it's not a historical document, it's a narrative.
Myth, and I mean that not in the dismissive sense of it didn't happen and it likely didn't happen the way it was described in Joshua, but in the positive sense in that this is what the Hebrews, the Israelites, they included this for a reason. In fact, Joshua and Judges are some of the earliest set, fully composed pieces of the.
Hebrew Scriptures. So before we had Torah completely laid out, Joshua Judges, Samuel and Kings were compiled in an early form by the Deuteronomistic, and it was one of the earliest set out pieces. And it begins with Joshua Moses' assistant. Moses was another Arthur figure, like Abraham, before it was all written down.
And so to look away. From the book of Joshua is to ignore an integral part of the Hebrew witness before watching the world. And one of the things it does is that it's a people wrestling with how they acquired their own privilege. And so we talk about privilege and bias. In this episode we talk about as white.
Heterosexual normative evangelical men. What does it mean to take our own complicity? Seriously? And that's something I had a lot of practice in as a veteran in an unpopular war or a soldier in an unpopular war. And I talk a little bit about how some of the protests. Scared me. The Charlottesville or the Post Charlottesville protests were terrifying in a way for veterans because of how progressive America treated people who had fought in an unpopular and unjust war.
So it's a really great episode, and I want to front load all the, the things you need to think about the re-release of God as a grunt I didn't mention yet, but Grunt Khan October 25th, it's gonna be here in Albany. It'll be before the chapter house officially launches. So if you wanna check that out, check out grunt Con at PPHQ, it's there at the header.
But all of this is swimming together and then lead up to Veteran's Day. Which is also Martin Mass, which is also the My patron saint and the namesake of the community that I am the director of Education for the hospitality of St. Martin. So there's all kinds of goodies and Easter eggs. And not just the episode, but also the serial.
I'm doing re-releasing the podcast calling. To get convening this event. If anything that I've been doing interests you or excites your interest, come to Grunt Con, come to Albany. Check out the chapter house or go online. You can support us@bookshop.org. You can support us@libro.fm. You could even give us money on Venmo.
And one of the things that's just been incredible is that the community here in Albany, the bookstores are almost entirely furnished. I already brought my own inventory. I'm getting more inventory daily. So it's very much the spirit field craftsmen who built the tabernacle. That eventually would rest in Shiloh and it's just awesome.
And Russell is a part of my history as have been Chris Haw and David Peters, and a number of the guests that we'll be hearing from in later episodes of Grunt, God, every single week until November 11th, we're gonna go through the entire, God is a grunt book, chapter by chapter. And some chapters we'll have two.
I'm happy to announce that Willie Jennings will be giving. Will be interviewed for my chapter on Ralph Abernathy and or the spitting image debate which was like my addendum chapter after the second part. And I also have heard from Dons Abernathy, Ralph's daughter about talking with her about what it means to be.
A part of a movement within a family, within a movement that is doing something risky and scary and to see how some successes and some failures mix together into what we know now as history. So anyway. I'm Russell Johnson of the University of Chicago. Here he is to join me in a conversation about Joshua and policing.
I hope you'll listen. I hope you'll follow. I hope you'll subscribe, and ultimately, I hope you'll come check out the chapter house and support us in any way that you feel like you can. Thanks for listening.
Interview
Logan M Isaac: Okay. We're here with Dr. Russell Johnson at University of Chicago. Russell and I go way back as I think Chris Haw and David Peters as well. Welcome Russell. I might say not just my best man, but the best man. Would you give our listeners a bit of your background with the caveat that. I've tried to find some very good policing people, and we, I managed to secure you for this interview.
Russell Johnson: Yeah my whole life I've been filling in for more competent scholars and doing the best that I can.
So this is familiar territory for me. As Logan mentioned, I teach at the University of Chicago. My work is on antagonism and disagreement. Specifically how good guys versus bad guys framing whether in the news or in movies is sometimes useful but often inadequate to get it the reality of how we understand ourselves, how we understand our enemies.
So I teach courses on eth comparative religious ethics on, in particular compar comparative religious [00:01:00] ethics in film with the aim of telling more complex stories about the way that we interact and the way that we fight.
Logan M Isaac: It may be worth mentioning that you've been going to Mennonite churches, but I would you say a little bit about your tradition or at least your, where you found home within the institutional church?
Russell Johnson: So I grew up in an evangelical church. And then during af after I graduated from college, I got really interested in the question of the ethics of violence, which is a question that I had never really thought much about. It's not like I had strong feelings before one way or another and underwent a conversion.
I had just not thought about it seriously. And so in the year between my undergraduate degree and my master's degree, which is where I met Logan I read every book I could get my hands on and then some about just war theory, Christian pacifism, realism, et cetera. And in part because of some of the authors whose work I became familiar with through that process of research, just not research in the interest of my career, but in the interest of [00:02:00] just figuring out what I think is true I became exposed to some Mennonite authors and the Mennonite tradition.
And then, so when I started up at Duke Divinity School, I started going to a Mennonite church. And I have not looked back since.
Logan M Isaac: And I think it's also worth mentioning your thesis at Chicago was on communication and social conflict.
Russell Johnson: That's exactly right. And not just the thesis. A book. A book, oh yeah.
That people can buy with green money. Titled Beyond Civility in Social Conflict Dialogue, critique and Religious Ethics. That book takes the nonviolent direct action tradition, Moham Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr. Desmond Tutu, et cetera, and applies it to debates about civility and protest and polarization in c in civ civilizations like the contemporary United States.
I should say, even though you can purchase it it's a little bit expensive as a, it's a library book Yeah. Hardcover right now. So I recommend buying Logan's books instead in the meantime and waiting until mine comes out on paperback.
Logan M Isaac: So I think that actually, like [00:03:00] we're joking about you not being qualified, but in a very important sense, Joshua, I think sits at a really important nexus point between.
Not just 'cause a deal. The book I distinguished the book Joshua and the person Joshua, and I think that's important, but I also don't wanna say they're separate. They're the same for a reason. And one of my, one of the things I'll call it a lament, is that the violence question, what to do with it is, has become such a turnoff for people who say they believe in the Bible or follow Jesus whose Anglicized last name is, or native tongue is anglicized Joshua.
And I don't get into that too much in this chapter, more in the next one. But tell me a little bit about how, or in the book the subtitle of the chapter is [00:04:00] Joshua policing in the Militia Day. And I wrote this in, what was it, 20? 2021. We have George Floyd we have Derek Chauvin.
We have the protests that are going on across the country. And I talk about this motto to serve and protect because it strikes me that's not an illegitimate rendering of the human, the humans responsibility and genesis to a bed and shamar to serve a bed or work and shamar, which is to keep or protect.
And Cain is am I my brother's keeper, his shamar. And so it just, Joshua, I don't think is necessarily the best like archetype or foil for policing, but I do think that the military, if we're gonna have constructive conversations about it, I think we have to. We, I think we're forced into a definition that expands the quote unquote military into police force, EMS and all the different [00:05:00] institutions that support human society to include, or I, maybe I should say, to not exclude mil armed force, armed service.
But walk me through how much of your thesis and scholarship has been influenced by civility, what do you mean by that? And how does that map onto, a Mennonite Anaba perspective on, on the world?
Russell Johnson: Yeah, so for me, civility means a few different things, and actually it's pretty relevant to work that you've done.
Is. A lot of people think of civility as a list of rules that we have to abide by when we're engaging in disagreements about, with people who don't see the world the way that we see it, whether that's political opponents or otherwise. And so the idea is that you're respectful, you're dialogical, you listen before trying to respond.
You don't interrupt people, you don't dismiss people, you don't lie to people, that sort of thing. And the problem with the idea of civility as a list of rules [00:06:00] is. That then we have to have a commitment to the authority of those rules that is higher than our commitments to what we're trying to fight for in the first place.
And as I argue in the book, like some of the rules of just war theory it's hard to say, okay, we need to abide by these rules of morality when the choice that we feel like we're faced with is okay, but if we don't fight our enemy the way they're currently fighting against us, then we're going to lose.
And or, and so the justifications. Used for doing actions against the laws of war are often not because people are in any way cruel, but because they take a sort of utilitarian, the greatest good that we can achieve supersedes our commitment to abiding by various conventions and norms of what counts as just warfare.
And I see that exact same pattern when I think, when I look at the ways people go about navigating political conflict of, one of my favorite examples is Margot Rubio gave a speech in Congress about the importance [00:07:00] of civility and respect in politics. And within a year he made a joke about Trump having a small penis.
So it's one of those, he doesn't realize that actually, hey, this commitment really matters or like actually has any sort of force or any teeth to, to restrain him. And so when I look at, sort of military ethics, I look at, okay, how do we think about this in terms of a training in virtues and a recognition of a commitment that is bigger than our commitment to just victory.
And how do we anchor our moral commitments? How do we anchor the sort of laws that we follow the virtues that we have in something deeper than just winning. And I think we see that in, in the book of Joshua because it's not just about victory as much as it's about obedience to God, first and foremost and about being willing to do what it takes to to bring about the fulfillment of the covenant.
Logan M Isaac: Yeah. And I I think of, my sense is that [00:08:00] Joshua and Judges by extension are so easily. Either abused or abandoned by, depending on your political affiliation. Progressives do not like to talk about it because it's a reminder of the cost of our own privilege. Like someone, someone took this land, someone developed this land, and it wasn't the people that were found when we got here.
And the Canaanite campaign, the military campaign in Canaan has been described as genocide. It's been dismissed as like non-historical. And one of the things that I really find one of the things I think we lose sight of is that, we have what I think it's been referred to as the arrogance of modernity.
We forget that people really did not have the same perspective that we have now. Whether that's the easy one. To point to is like history was never, or was not initially. Here's this chronological series of provable events. It was how do we explain our own [00:09:00] experience and we're going to have biases.
Every single, battle that was described in the Iron Age is like we won, we totally destroyed the enemy. And that's so human. It's of course we're not gonna get into how we messed up. And I see Joshua, the, not only is it the name of the Messiah, but that, that, that is particularly it.
We have to grapple with the cost of our privilege. I was about to say freedom and that's a very American kind of phrasing, but one of the things I hear that's intention. That's intention for you is civility can also be quote unquote, air scare quotes. Civility can be used to quell descent and it can be, abandoned by the those with power like Marco Rubio.
What would you say to those who have less power and civility? Is this I want civility, but you can take a short look at any of my websites [00:10:00] and realize that's not my highest expecta. That's not my highest priority. Civility is good and I think you can be confrontational without being uncivil.
But like also, we're both white men and I hear from a lot of other white men about how difficult it is to navigate this world where. Your skin color and your sex is being used as an excuse to not have to deal with who you are. Like in a, so a divine spirituality. Like I'm Logan. I was Logan military, but yeah I wonder if you have something to say about what do we do or how do we, how does civility work to oppose a just society and how do those people who desire to be just, but are unwilling to abandon or are unwilling to just perform civility in order to acquire powers?
Is that making sense? It does make sense.
Russell Johnson: And this is, this for me is where the tradition of nonviolent direct action comes in is for a lot of people in that tra tradition [00:11:00] what their arguments weren't rooted just in terms of morality, in terms of what are the rules that we should follow, how we should treat other people, but in terms of their assessment of what would be the most effective method of bringing about social change.
So Martin Luther King, for instance, said that he thought nonviolent direct action for his people was the only not only the most moral, but also the most effective. And part of the reasoning I understand that is is to challenge not just the people who you take to be your opponents, but to challenge the very ideologies the stories they tell about themselves and about you.
So an example I often give is Desmond Tutu in apartheid South Africa. He was making a case against the use of violence by people on his own side, on his own anti-apartheid side. And his argument was that whenever we use violence especially in particular Black South Africans, part of what we're doing is we're feeding into the narrative that we are uncivilized and uncapable of [00:12:00] ruling ourselves.
So ironically, the act of opposing the white, African or oppressive government through violence on one level, it is opposition, but on another level, it's feeding the justification they have in order to justify oppression and repression. And so for tutu non-violence was a way of showing that things needed to change and that we weren't going to persist.
And that apartheid didn't mean friendship as one of the prime ministers of South Africa said it did. And so to push against the lie, but to do it more effectively because you're not just pushing against the people that you're opposing, but also against the logic that giving rise to that pervades.
And so I'm hesitant to tell people to be more civil. But rather I want them to think about, okay, what actually brings about changes in the way people think. And sometimes our tendency is oh the firmest, most forceful, most one-sided, most dismissive rhetoric. That's what's really gonna shake people out of [00:13:00] their out of their mindset.
And maybe sometimes it, sometimes that's exactly what's needed. But we need to be circumspect, I think.
Logan M Isaac: Yeah. As Anna Baptism is closest to your kind of central tradition. One of the difficulties I've found in trying to advocate for human dignity for military families is the retrenchment behind I'll put it, I'll.
Try and keep it an SFW or safer word. Ooh. There's a Mennonite pastor locally, I'm not gonna say where, I'm not gonna remind people where there's a Mennonite pastor locally and he came and gave a sermon at our church the Sunday before Memorial Day. And this will get into some other chapter material.
But the reading was Act 16 and it's Lydia Ra, who I make a case in the book and anywhere I can, she's a military spouse. She's either, either her father got her access to the [00:14:00] Purple Trade and died or whatever, or her husband did, and there's no mention of him. So it seems like she's a gold star. Wife or gold star daughter.
And then it goes into Des, who's also very likely a political, a Legionnaire or a Roman, not, Syrian. Anyway, and he's, it's right before Memorial Day. He and the Mennonite pastor has done his homework. He knows about the seashells and a particular place in tire. And I had I've been at this church, we've been there almost two years, and I was the lector and I read the part from acts 16, and he stopped short of doing any kind of work around Memorial Day.
In fact, he just ignored it. And I, I was really frustrated and I was really surprised to realize Laura was there with the girls. And as a military, military. Whether she likes it or not. I'm military, even as a veteran, and I never thought about this, but she said she [00:15:00] heard it and she realized, I'm Lydia.
I get a house, I get a car and income because of Logan's pension. And so she had an even closer relate, yeah. Association with Lydia. And so there are these stereotypes. She goes up, I haven't, I forgot to finish the story. She goes up to him afterwards and she says, and Laura, she's very congenial, and she said something to the effect of, I really wish you'd gone into military families.
Tomorrow's Memorial Day. I'm from a military family. And his response was just like I'm a Mennonite. We don't believe in that. And Mennonites are not the only kind of denominational tradition that I know What I'm doing with military feels like I'm saying all soldiers are good. Or that, there's this jump to conclusions that the military is all one thing that I'm also trying to fight back against.
But what's the danger or how do [00:16:00] pacifist imaginations, what do they need to flex to be more civil? And what needs to be, what needs to be expanded? Like, how does that bridge get built, do you think? And I think you and I have had this long relationship, and I think you would intuit a lot more than this Mennonite pastor might.
But what if we were having a conversation with other people, what have we done or how and what could we do better to make sure that these conversations are making their way into like normal churches?
Russell Johnson: I think one thing, and here again I'm gonna default to the nonviolent direct action tradition.
A lot of the important work that's done in that is getting clarity on while it is absolutely necessary to take a moral stand and to oppose what you take to be unjust or, and moral activities that should always be couched first and foremost within compassion for people for whom carrying out [00:17:00] those activities seems like their only way forward.
And so King for instance, was very explicit that he was like, our enemy is not white people. Our enemy is these sort of social systems of segregation, militarism, racism. And economic exploitation. And the way those systems work is that they don't depend on there being bad people doing bad things.
They depend on making it such that people aren't faced with particularly good choices where people who aren't necessarily thinking about what they're going through nonetheless contribute through their language and through their actions to to, to situations that dehumanize all of us.
And so I think one of the things that I've been insistent on is even if you do have. A strong commitment against the youth use of lethal violence that in no way makes you anti soldier. And not just because the significant majority of what soldiers [00:18:00] do is not killing people. Overwhelmingly that is not what is being done.
But it's because if you want to say, okay, how do we live in a world where that doesn't happen? That takes a kind of understanding of responsibility in which we pay attention to the people who are making the decisions, the people who are, for instance, sending the soldiers out to war. One of the things you talk about in this chapter is this idea that to put it bluntly, shit rolls downhill.
Which is to say that the soldiers are often the ones. Who because they're carrying out the orders, they're the ones who we hold to blame if a trigger is pulled. Yeah. When I think if we're actually attentive to the way our militaries function within the roles of our government, like the politicians bear a greater share of responsibility and the people who supported and voted for and endorsed the politicians.
Yeah. And the people who buy the products that give rise to the demand. Yeah. So that, that is to say, even if I'm in, in saying that I'm critical of. [00:19:00] Violence and that I'm worried about militarism. That's not a statement in which I put myself in the category of good people who are doing the right thing and put soldiers in the category of the bad people who are doing the wrong thing.
I'm criticizing a system that I am part of and want to be free of, and I also want the people who are doing something that I take to be morally wrong to also be free of that system. And it happens to be the case that the majority of veterans that I've talked with about these things. The, it's not like they're all radically pro-war.
Yeah. That's something that because they're the biggest victims of war a lot of the time. And so I, I found productive conversations, not just with you, but with others about the, that once you're able to frame it not in ways that get beyond the I trying to preserve your own innocence by being one of the good guys with your ism yeah.
And rather toward getting into recognizing your shared humanity and trying to figure out what an alternative way of living together looks like.
Logan M Isaac: I hadn't thought of the shit rolls [00:20:00] downhill in a civilian sense before, but, and it absolutely fits. I always thought it was weird. I we're about to take a break, but when we come back, I want to talk about power and responsibility, and not just in the political sense, but like theological and moral.
Like one of the things that George Floyd. The Me Too movements. Both of them are forcing the dominant culture, white culture, androcentric culture. They're forcing us, us all to reckon with is what does it mean to have responsibility and recognize our bias. Like we have this language around Decenter.
If you are a not the marginalized community, how do you decenter? But also one of the things that I really struggled with, it was around the Charlottesville protest when we were in Durham, I think after Laura and I were married, silent Sam and oh, the Durham Memorial was really [00:21:00] difficult and really quickly for our listeners in 20 16, 20 17, right around Charlottesville.
The, I can't remember which came first. I wanna say Silent Sam, which is right by UNC Chapel Hill where Laura worked. They wanted to take it down and they were defacing with paint and some other stuff. And I took that as as a soul. This was a con it was a Confederate
Russell Johnson: statue.
Logan M Isaac: Sorry. Yes. Yeah. It was to the boys who wore the gray.
And this was on UNC Chapel Hills campus. And it was put there by Julian Carr, who was an avowed racist. And it was a, a southern state, but it was after the war, significant amount of time. I can't remember the timing. And I witnessed this right next to my wife's work as I was one of the boys, not gray, but I went to an unpopular war and I participated.
I couldn't watch what was happening to Silent Sam without [00:22:00] thinking What happens when the progressive imagination gets more spun up and remembers oh, I was an immoral soldier. Or everything that I did was touched by our association with violence and it got really crystallized. And I got in some trouble on Twitter when the Durham monument Garden, or Memorial Garden, they called it, there was a monument to every war.
We in a southern state, North Carolina, and one of the monuments was for the Civil War. And this one had a human, a humanoid statue as well, and a wrapped a ratt strap around its neck and pulled it down. And then there were these activists who sat around it with raised fists. And I thought it's extra dig.
It was a mob decision. Slightly extra judicial. It was really difficult to watch as a, an aspiring progressive. Like I saw where there was a line and it was in those [00:23:00] moments of speaking up about that in a public forum that I was told I need to decenter, that I need to get out of the way. A lot of people from out of town were saying it.
And so when we come back, I want to talk about you as a civilian. You have even more of the normative kind of psyche than I do. 'cause I discovered I was marginalized as a member of a military family. But I want to hear from you, like, how does power and responsibility go hand in hand? And then how do we take that?
And I want to get back in the Bible, or at least hermeneutics thinking about what we do with this really difficult text. Are there ways of interpreting the text that are. Rejuvenating, if not difficult. So since I was on my soapbox for a little while, I'll give you the floor before we head to break, but I wonder if you have some initial thoughts on that power and responsibility.
Russell Johnson: For me, one of the questions we [00:24:00] should always be asking is what are the statements made by my actions or inactions? And so the question of should we tear this statue down or not? And how do we go about doing that? One of the questions is what messages does this act send and to what communities?
And there's no way it's impossible for human language or symbolic action to convey exactly what you intend to every person. But I think the best version of that action would be to say, Hey, we are taking this down because we, what we are opposed to is this sort of lost cause. Racial racial imagination and the fact that this was put up years afterwards for these purposes of valorizing, this sort of thing.
And what we're gonna do in place is put up a different memorial because we do recognize that these young men, and in some cases women who died in these conflicts we're doing something that they took to be necessary or virtuous. And there's a lot [00:25:00] to, to commemorate here and a lot to mourn about their loss.
And that is, there is a sort of sincere memorialization that takes place even to victims as you said of IM unpopular wars. And so I think the, sometimes you don't always have the luxury of being able to say, Hey, here's what we're doing and here's how you should make sense of it, and here's why.
And so I understand that's not always possible, but I think there's a way of taking dramatic. Perhaps uncivil actions. And clarifying exactly, almost surgically, here's what we need to get rid of for the betterment of everyone involved. And regardless of your concerns, regardless of your background, regardless of how much power you have within our system, you can join in with this action and recognize this is building toward a better world.
Logan M Isaac: Yeah. A more universal, I almost heard is it effective to be doing this or does it, is it just cathartic and catharsis is important and I think that, like Joshua and the book is a kind of catharsis, but yeah, we've gotta, [00:26:00] we've gotta be aware of what we're communicating despite our intent. With that where you're going to take a break, listen some commercials, and we'll be right back with Dr. Russell Johnson of U Chicago.​
All right. We're back with Russell Johnson of University Chicago talking about Joshua, the book and Joshua the man and the phenomenon of policing. And we, I mentioned George Floyd and me Too, and I'm gonna focus on George Floyd because I think it's more salient with policing. And we talked about how civility is important, but it's not always our TLOs that sometimes we have to, if not violate, we have to step outside.
Sometimes the structures that we've created to include civility in order to make sure that our higher or highest ideals are still being. [00:27:00] Tended to use kind of biblical language. And one of the things that I mentioned right before the break, the Charlottesville and Silent Sam and the Durham Memorial, and I was, I spoke up and offered a contrasting view of those local events, silent Sam in the Durham Memorial Garden.
And I was told to decenter myself to put a block around whatever I thought or felt. And I was just beginning to realize that my experience as a military veteran and later and a family member, because by then I was married with a kid that, that was asking me to restrict and focus in on one thing to the exclusion of others.
And I've. I have this kind of proverb that's, that sometimes rolls around in my head. The most truthful story is the one that fits most of the facts. And, at a, in a courtroom you're asked, will you tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. And it's I don't know about the nothing but the [00:28:00] truth, but I'll tell you as whole of a truth as I can.
And bringing it back into Joshua and the expectation of all humanity to be ed and Shamar to keep or to work and to keep, or to protect and to serve. That it's I think I say in the book, like the military, which in my definition includes the police and EMS and firefighters that the police.
The motto to protect and serve just serves as like this weird, almost like an idol. The yeah, we protect and serve. And then you think, do you, let's step back. Let's look at the wider picture in order to see more clearly. And in order to get back into Joshua, I did wanna mention that one of, one of my, like one of the early books that really helped me was by Susan McDonald, God and Violence.
And it go and she goes through, she's a nun. She was at college of St. Mary or something like that out in Maryland. [00:29:00] And she really got into the Greek and the Hebrew, mostly the Hebrew to point out, which I still remember. Like Joshua is 26 chapters long, I think 22, I can't remember. 25 or 26.
Russell Johnson: Yeah.
Logan M Isaac: 26. And only 10 of them, or less than 10 of them have anything to do with violence.
And I think we can use Myop 24th constructively to like really dive into it like Susan McDonald taught me to do. Look, if you wanna talk about violence, like that's a, about a third of the book. Let's talk about the other two thirds, which is divvying out the land in an orderly fashion. I, yeah, I wonder, I'd love to hear your thoughts about like how scripture, this text that we give all this meaning to can, is open.
Like anybody, it's, it's a public domain if you wanna call it that. It's open source and so anybody can abuse it, but because it's that foundation, I think there is some value in okay, no let's abuse [00:30:00] you of your abusive interpretation by going back to the text. But is that just another form of myop or blinkering ourselves.
Russell Johnson: Yeah. Yeah. So I think one thing we have to recognize when we're looking at scripture and particularly the Hebrew Bible, is that these texts did not emerge in a vacuum. Yeah. They are literary creations, whatever else they may be. And they are partaking in and sometimes criticizing or inverting or spinning some of the literary conventions of their era.
And so a lot of scholars who have looked at Joshua even so now most people based on archeological evidence think that the kind of conquest narrative in which Israel just totally routed Canaan is not an accurate description of what happened. And that's not just a sort of modern archeological discussion or finding because even within the texts of Joshua and Judges.
There are conflicting accounts in, in cha chapters 10, 11 and 23. There's this description as, or chapters 10 and 11, and there's description of we have totally routed the [00:31:00] Canaanites. They're completely destroyed. And mission accomplished 15, 15, 16, 17 in the beginning of judges. It's like they're still here, they're still around this.
And so when it's not that we're smart and that we found this inconsistency and that the people who were editing and writing the book of Joshua did not know about it this happens frequently in the Bible when we get differing competing accounts, that, and instead of trying to hide that or smooth over it, they're put side by side.
And what that leads us to do is to think, okay, so if what this is not just. A description of what happened historically. But something else, what is that? Something else? Yeah. And I think that's also the case when it comes to the use of hyperbolic language because like with reading the creation story in Genesis you have to take it into consideration that when they say God created the sun, they are writing that within a context of ancient near Eastern societies in which the sun was the God.
Ugh. Yeah. And it's not a text that's just [00:32:00] saying, here's what we believe. It's a text that is using some of the same poetic conventions as its neighbors but for a different purpose. Yeah. And we find that with Joshua too, because the discussions a lot of the tropes that we see in Joshua, including the sun standing still, including the falling of the walls and in particular the discussions of totally wiping out your opponents and exaggerating the size of battlefields and armies beyond what would be have been practical.
We're very common then. And it's worth noting. Not necessarily uncommon now. We still talk about like the Seahawks totally slaughtered the Ravens. Yeah. Like the Bengals absolutely annihilated the Patriots. Yeah. As so it's not that, it's not that distant. So with that in mind, when we see how this within the ancient near Eastern context.
Is partaking in some of the same conventions but spinning them in a different direction. We have to ask, okay, what is it? What is it drawing our attention to? What makes it different? And part of what makes it different is the emphasis on the covenant with Moses. Joshua begins with the discussion of [00:33:00] Moses and ends with an ex exportation to obedience.
And the discussion of the who gets what parts of the land which takes up, as you've noted a half or if not more than half of the book of Joshua. Is the way that would've been read to its original crowd is, Hey, this promise that our people received long time ago, it's coming true.
Like the covenant with a God made with Abraham is not lost. These lands are ours. And so it's this context of sort of celebration and nationalism but also an exhortation to obedience that we see. For instance, with the story of aah who was disobedient and was stoned in the middle of it.
And then the exhortation to obedience that Joshua gives at the end. There is this sense of, it's reinforcing lots of. Aspect. It's not just saying, here's how the battle was won. It's saying, here's who we are as a people. Here's what kind of God our God is, who fulfills the promises that God makes, and here's what [00:34:00] we need to do in order to keep living into our side of the covenant through obedience compassion and being willing to recognize goodness in other people when we see it.
Like the story of Rahab, but also being willing to be set apart and to not fall into the same idolatrous patterns as our neighbors. So I think that those are some of the aspects of Joshua that really jump out to me when you put it in that conversation.
Logan M Isaac: Yeah, and one of the things I think we miss, especially if you're brought up evangelical, like we, we take for granted the Bible just has always existed, but most likely Joshua was written at the time, almost certainly at the time of the United Kingdom at the earliest.
And this is a people trying to make sense of their past, and there's different scholars that date the different. Major compositions differently, but like the discovery of the book of the law under Josiah and it likely being Deuteronomy and possibly most of the deuteronomic literature to include Joshua and Judges, like Joshua is a main feature [00:35:00] in Joshua and the very beginning of judges.
But in the end of Torah with Deuteronomy, he's the, he's Moses's assistant, and Moses is the big star that Joshua gets to do all these things is a way of explaining events that have already happened. It may there's a, I won't name who it was, but I, there's a couple of resources I really love on the Bible.
And I'm me. I always go in and look like veteran, soldier war, military and see what they have to say. And this particular resource didn't have very much, and the main person said at the beginning of one of these episodes, Joshua makes me really uncomfortable and I don't wanna do this podcast, or I don't wanna do this section thingy.
And I kept listening, but I really didn't want to because it felt like an abdication of responsibility. And it felt like my community, military [00:36:00] families, I'm, let's, I'm probably an outlier. I don't think very many people are gonna go through three years of formal educational theological training. After their service, they're probably gonna get a job and settle down.
Theologians, they're not police, but like they have a responsibility. And I want to keep in constant mind policing. And in the book I talk about this motto to serve and protect the police. The Los Angeles Police Force as I write in the book has somebody they've said, came up with that motto, one of their detectives from the fifties.
And then later after his death, his daughter came out and said, actually, it was my mom. It was around the dinner table. And my mom brought it up and my dad took it to work. And that's fine, whatever. And when Rodney King was beaten in the nineties, she wrote an article in Variety or something saying, look, they've abandoned their motto.
They've abdicated their responsibility. And I mentioned before the break, I want to talk [00:37:00] about power and responsibility because I found myself and, I was kicked out. Language is tricky, but I'm gonna say I basically got pushed outta the military because I refused to carry a weapon, but I also didn't ask for discharge.
And and I, the part of the reason for that is, is I'm encountering Yoder and Tolstoy on active duty shortly after a combat deployment. I'm reading it with five years of history in the military. TOL story didn't serve, Yoder, didn't serve a lot of theologians that I encountered then and now didn't serve, no veterans.
Were on staff or on faculty at Duke. And so I'm having to learn a lot of this on my own and I don't want other military families or military veterans to have to do that work. Would you say a little bit about, and I'll back up and say I've come to the point of qualifying what I'll call what I've, I don't know if I'm a pacifist because that term has become a.
A label [00:38:00] that has outgrown its effectiveness, maybe. And I've started quantifying it between a toxic pacifism, and I say if you can't tell the moral difference between a sniper and a medic, you cannot be anti-war without being anti-military. And I'm sure, because you've known me like there's all these different moss and let's stop with the homogenizing, the military and start digging into this.
But I can't do it as a marginalized member or a member of marginalized community. The academic world as a whole reflects a society that produces it. And I, it's difficult finding veteran mentors what can be done within professional theological spaces to make room for these uncomfortable conversations.
And what is the responsibility of a theologian or any religious leader? To make the, make spaces for those conversations. Like I [00:39:00] know Decentering and I mentioned earlier, like I knew immediately that the veteran who told me to Decenter hadn't done the work to look at ourselves as being the recipients of injustice.
That there was a certain amount of, I don't wanna call it shame, 'cause I don't know, I don't, I'm not gonna diagnose someone, but it took me a long time to get to where I trust my experience, I trust my training, and I'm going to use those things despite people who also have training, but who don't have the experience.
As a civilian, what is your responsibility to recognize and to combat civilian theology and civilian bias?
Russell Johnson: I'll get at this sort of sideways. So I think Pierre Bale said that, the sort of, the despair of humanity is that the solutions that get us out of one problem, the lights by which we navigate our way [00:40:00] out of one problem, lead us into another problem. And so it is the case that our ability to grow in recognizing how we can show compassion to other people.
And as I was saying earlier in, in being aware of how what we say and what we do is received by various communities is dialectical in so far as it's never, you're never going to have the last word. You're never going to do the perfect thing. You always have to be open to receiving the fact that the intervention you are trying to make.
There's some, there's people in your blind spots. There are concerns you're not addressing and that you should. Receive that kind of criticism as an opportunity to open your perspective, not necessarily to shut down what you're doing, but to recognize that what you're doing there, there's a way of doing it that makes it even more inclusive and even more powerful.
I look for instance, the work of James Cone who is a pivotal full a theologian and known as the founder of black theology in America. He was making this significant intervention into a predominantly white theological [00:41:00] academy and demanding that people take black experiences seriously.
But then he himself was critiqued by Dolores Williams and other black women saying yes to that. But also you're reproducing some of the same problems that you're critiquing in so far as the way you're not taking black women's perspectives seriously. And then black womanism faced a similar sort of critique from other communities and so on.
And so I look at it's not as if, okay, he was doing something bad, therefore he is a bad guy or something. I think we should all recognize that none of us are ever making this sort of perfect move and we should always be welcome. And not just welcoming, but actively looking for what are the communities and what are their concerns and how can I even as I'm critiquing this one thing, even as I'm critiquing militarism, even not critiquing political spending and that sort of thing, how can I re realize that there are aspects of, facets of this that that I'm missing because my social location hasn't [00:42:00] primed me to pay attention to it. And so some of the work that you're doing is helping people who don't even realize that what they're doing is leaving out veterans or perhaps alienating veterans.
And approaching them with that sort of charitable criticism of Hey, I know you're doing this important thing, keep doing it. But also take into consideration the fact that there are all these people and there are all these needs and that those should color the work that you're doing and the constructive intervention that you're doing.
And so I think theologians should and ethicists and so on, should be open to and actively looking for how they can hear different concerns including veteran concerns
Logan M Isaac: if they're inside the boat or inside the house. They always need to keep an eye outside. Is that fair?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was so interesting. It was, yeah, it was, it developed a new muscle in me. I think we've had this conversation, but like in the military, you're trained, like the mission is more important and we can talk about higher [00:43:00] powers and ideals and principles of blah, blah, blah.
But you learn to decenter yourself, and that is a certain kind of good. And what really pained me is that my own community, which I now know beyond any shadow of a doubt, is deprived of the rights or service secures. We've been frequently targeted by the very laws. They're supposed to protect us, but we don't want to have that conversation because even, we know we're outside the boat or the house or whatever, but we know what we have.
We don't want to have less and we don't want to shake the boat. And I think that the scary thing or the, yeah, it takes a certain kind of muscle to be like to change gears to decenter maybe. But yeah, I've, that's something I've always really appreciated with you. I think you're able to listen and really digest what's being said.
And I think part of that is Anabaptist formation. I think it's great, but I also can sense that it goes deeper than Anna baptism or Mennonite [00:44:00] identity is not so central in contrast to this Mennonite pastor. Let's not forget we're Christians before what, whatever denomination, and I think even Christ would say let's not forget, we're all humans.
We're all sons of Adamo through Abraham in faith and, yeah, these are hard conversations and it's always, I am, I'm not unaware of the tragic irony that two white guys are talking about policing. But I do think that there's something parallel there that I really hope that church can begin to learn because identity is important, but also like humanity I think is even more important.
And sometimes we lose sight of that.
Russell Johnson: I think so, I think there are ways of having these conversations that don't. Arrogate to oneself in authority or a centrality that one needs, because yet does the world need white guys more talking about policing more so than other voices who are more likely to be the victims of policing?
No. Yeah. But there's no way in which we're going to get change if white [00:45:00] people don't talk about it too. And so there's a way of saying Hey, I know I'm not this isn't about me, but it concerns me. Because people who are made in the image of God, people I care about are affected by this.
And so I'm going to learn what I can about this. I'm going to take whatever stand I can about this, and I'm going to, if that means, just stuffing envelopes I want to be part of whatever effort I can be part of. And I don't need to be the person behind the bullhorn in order to make my voice heard whether silently or vocally against injustice.
And so I think there's a way of. Knowing how to be part of something be part of an effort that matters without feeling like you are the protagonist. Of it is a skill that I think we can all we can all develop and that some of us that means decentering ourselves. And some of that means stepping out actually a little bit more.
That was the hardest thing. Yeah. Yeah. 'cause my battle buddies were right. Those statues represent something really important to more people than military communities. I [00:46:00] think maybe part of the important piece that maybe I feel like we're missing is there's a certain mobility to it. One thing I loved about, like Iraq veterans against the war and my activist work is that within the veteran community, there was Vietnam veterans against the war that helped Iraq veterans against the war.
Logan M Isaac: Make their way. And there was a few people, David Klein in particular, I remember I was at Winter Soldier in March of oh eight and there was some reporters and they went to David Klein because he was their contact and he stopped them. He said, no, you need to talk to them. I don't need to be at the front of the Bullhorn.
I've had my time. And one thing I really appreciated about those vets saying that thing is that, yeah, we recognize that we don't, that's the military training. Okay there's somebody else that needs to be elevated. And it's so hard. It's so hard through Mil and through our, these other individuals are also white males.
It's really hard because of that to be like, [00:47:00] I have something important to say that I think involves all of us. And me seeing humanity in you also means I need to be able to see humanity in myself. And veterans have been trained not only to make themselves less, but we are expendable. There's something of goodness wrapped up in that being willing to sacrifice for yourself for a greater good.
That is a good, yeah, but we have 17 suicides a day. There's something, there's that, there's some amount of mobility that we're missing, like maybe moral mobility, because I think of like bridges and I think you're aware of a lot of the difficulty I've had, and maybe I've used this line or I've shared this line with you before, but we are, we're so quick to say, oh, don't burn bridges.
But a lot of my experience is not, that's not entirely fair If I have less privilege than somebody else and that collapses, or if the bridge retracts at the first sign of [00:48:00] adversity, that's a defense mechanism. You can't burn draw bridges and it takes a certain amount of, we'll call it arrogance, but like it's confidence.
We're not used to. We see so many white men like Derek Chauvin and the guy, there's Harvey Weinstein. There's so many. Clearly statistically, we're not incredibly trustworthy as a as a commu, as a minority, as a racial community. But that doesn't mean we're all bad. And we have to be able to make that moral discernment that ju that judgment of Harvey Weinstein is basically he that's messed up.
And like someone el I'm not gonna use my name, but we're not all bad. Yeah. And I don't trust other white guys that can't do some self-reflection, but I'm still willing to sit with them long enough like it was. I won't mention his name, but I remember who it was that I was talking to at the time at St.
Joe's Episcopal. One of the guys that would come for [00:49:00] breakfast was a vet, and he was the one who was telling me my ancestors fought, like, where are we gonna go to remember my great-great uncle or whatever. And he was also the guy that pointed out like the five slaves law or something. But if we wanna talk about power and social context, slave owners were less likely to be in uniform.
So when we say the boys in blue, we're not talking about plantation owners. And the rest we're talking about, there's this viral clip some time ago, a white guy, I don't know if he was holding a Confederate flag, I don't remember. But he's, he said, do you know how much a slave costs? And it's absolutely offensive.
It's jarring to hear that. But when you listen to it, what he's saying is do you think my family was rich? Do you think my family wanted to fight in that war? And I hear the same thing sure. For me it's like I didn't want to go to Iraq. I had a choice. I turned down ROTC to, to deploy and sure, you can level that at [00:50:00] me, but the vast majority of soldiers are not only drafted through economic pressure, they don't get to de decide when they deploy or when they don't.
And then in the military, we have the, the award system and like we get down on each other for who has or hasn't deployed. And it's do we have a choice in that? But it takes a certain amount of patience and maybe moral mobility to be able to hear that thing, disagree with it, perhaps, but hear beyond the words.
And yeah it's unfortunate. I feel like. Go ahead. Yeah, so
Russell Johnson: I think to your earlier point, to bring in a, a black female voice bell hooks, I think is really useful on this. 'Cause part, a big part of what Bell Hooks argues is that she's not against men, she's against the patriarchy.
And and these structures of domination white, hetero, masculine domination are something that if that's your opponent, not of them, but of this way of thinking and living embodied in our [00:51:00] society then that one helps you from communicating in ways that unnecessarily alienate people that might otherwise be alienated.
But two, it makes you realize that part of the work you have to do is work on your own self. And so if I'm opposed to the patriarchy, that's not me putting myself on a pedestal and giving myself flowers and a silver medal and saying I'm one of the good ones because I'm against the patriarchy.
It's me saying, Hey, on my day-to-day life, I have to scrutinize ways that I benefit from and contribute to this social dehumanizing form that dehumanizes first and foremost women, but secondarily men and non-binary people as well. And I think that way of framing it that I see as pivotal to the non-violent direct action tradition is pivotal to carrying out advocacy of any kind whether it's the one that primarily, directly affects you or rather, or whether it's the kind that affects you because you benefit from it and because you unconsciously participate in it to your own detriment.
Logan M Isaac: Yeah, I think maybe a good closing [00:52:00] not like the comment. Like Joshua, like it didn't really happen. There's another scholar who said, I, I don't know what to do with Joshua, but we know it didn't really happen as that's like reassurance that we don't, we shouldn't feel any kind of way about it.
But clearly whoever gave us the Bible, whatever collection of human beings, they put it there for a reason. And it's a pretty significant book. Yes, it may not have happened, but to your earlier point, like what reason could they have put it in there and what are we supposed to learn from that? And if we can't be honest, I feel like that it's ultimately about honesty.
If you are reflecting on yourself, everybody has a certain amount of privilege and a certain amount of marginalization going on. And I don't think that's an equal scale. It's not yeah, I have a lot. And then my veteran status is it's tiny, but that's the, if that's where everybody puts me when they don't want to deal with me, that becomes outsized.
So yeah, I think I wonder if it's, we [00:53:00] have to do better to ourselves for ourselves, and part of that requires us to go into ourselves more deeply by acknowledging the community that we're inescapably a part of, whether that's the scriptural, the canon, or the social community that we're a part of Now.
I'm not Derek Chauvin, but like I've benefited from that. I remember I was arrested for shoplifting when I was a kid and I sat in the backseat, but I didn't, that arrest got off my record and that would not have been the same if my skin color were a little bit darker.
Thing 1: Yeah.
Logan M Isaac: We've come up on our time, Russell.
I really appreciate our conversations. Thanks for coming in, talking about policing. The name of your dissertation. Do you want to give it again or do you want library? The name of the up library. The name of the book,
Russell Johnson: the name of the book is Beyond Civility and Social Conflict Dialogue, critique and Religious Ethics available from Cambridge University Press.
Logan M Isaac: Awesome. Or if you,
Russell Johnson: your local library. That's the way I recommend getting
Logan M Isaac: [00:54:00] All right, man. I appreciate, thanks a lot. Thank you for listening. This has been Logan, Isaac, and Russell Johnson. It's been awesome, man. Thanks again for Ha, for coming on.
Russell Johnson: Thanks for having me.
