Why Church Is Essential, Actually: Healing and Growth After COVID Lockdowns

Is Church Essential? Rethinking Worship After Covid
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[00:00:00] Jacob Winograd: When lockdowns hit, most churches went dark and for many worship moved to Zoom. But we have to ask ourselves, did we lose something in that shift? And what does it say about our understanding of the church and of the sacraments and of Christ’s authority when we let the state decide what’s essential? So today we’re gonna unpack what really happened to the church during COVID and what we need to reclaim before something like that happens again. Because when the state told the church to shut its doors, too many answered, yes, sir. Instead of what the apostles rightfully said when they were told to stop gathering and proclaiming the gospel, we must obey God rather than men.

[00:00:48] Narrator: If Christ is king, how should the Christian consider the kingdoms of this world? What does the Bible teach us about human authority and what it means to love our neighbors and our enemies before we render unto Caesar? What is Caesar’s? Let’s know what it means to render unto God. What is God’s? This is the Biblical Anarchy Podcast, the modern, prophetic voice against war and empire.

[00:01:20] Jacob Winograd: Welcome back to the Biblical Anarchy Podcast, a project of the Libertarian Christian Institute and part of our Christians for Liberty Network. I’m your host, Jacob Gra. So today’s episode is a rebroadcast of a conversation I had a couple months ago on the LCI Green Room, which was a our livestream show, and this was a livestream conversation with Dr.

Bench Jone, author of the book House divided the Church COVID and the Digital Age. We took a hard look at how the church responded or failed to respond to the COVID lockdowns, and not just about the policies of the government and the mandates or the church response just in this crisis, but also just the deeper underlying presuppositions about church and worship and how we approach the incorporation of new practices and technology and about the idea of.

How church relates to society and how church authority and church as an institution relates to the rest of society, including government. Bench is a Old Testament scholar. He’s a missionary and a pastor, and we dive deep into these questions. We go into sacramental theology, scientism, civil obedience, and disobedience, and why it was that so many churches seem to not even flinch when the government told them to shut their doors.

If the church is going to be salt and light in the world, we need to understand what happened and how to properly respond if something like this ever happens again, which I think it’s very likely that something like this, whether it’s a pandemic or something else is gonna happen where the government is going to further encroach on.

Our ability as Christians to gather worship together and proclaim God’s truth. So this, these kind of conversations and retrospectives are important. So let’s go ahead and get into it. Doctor, thanks for being with us here tonight. Go ahead and just reintroduce yourself and tell people a little bit about the book and why you wrote it, why they should check it out.

And then of course more of that will then come out in our conversation. But go ahead and kick us off with a little bit of a bio.

[00:03:36] Benj Giffone: Yeah, thanks Jacob. Thanks for having me on. And Ben is fine. Can just call me Ben is what I go to, but both my friends and my enemies I say, call me bitch.

Nice. And I wear a few different hats. In terms of vocation and teaching and ministry. So, I am an ordained minister, and I’m currently serving as a transitional pastor in a Presbyterian church here in Western Pennsylvania. A little bit of a ways away from my from my home. And so, I often go up, drive over an hour to serve my church on Sundays.

And my family doesn’t always come with me. So we attend actually attend an Anglican church here locally. And so, Presbyterian minister attending an Anglican church we were missionaries for six years in Eastern Europe, and that’s actually where we were during COVID when COVID first came onto the scene.

And a lot of the book I think one of the things that’s unique about this book is that it is I, it’s from an American perspective, but I was situated in Europe when it was happening. Had both a kind of a from afar view of what was happening in the US but also seeing different approaches taken in Europe.

Some of which were more strict, some of which were less strict. But another piece of that was that during the pandemic and while we lived in Lithuania, we attended a church that was in the Anaba tradition. And so have a little bit of an ecumenical experience when it comes to church.

And what I, what the other piece of what I do is I would say, if you ask me what is the core of what I do, but I am trained as a biblical scholar. And so my doctoral studies were in Old Testament, and for the last 11 years I’ve continued to write and teach in the area mainly of Old Testament.

And in the, starting in the narrative literature. And now I’ve kind of shifted over into more Isaiah and some other. Pieces of the Old Testament. But that’s what I was doing when we were in Lithuania. I was teaching at a Christian university and even though we’ve moved back to the US and I’m now in, in pastoral ministry as the main thing, I am also teaching remotely and with periodic trips for a seminary in South Asia.

And so I am once again a missionary in [00:06:00] that I am commissioned as a missionary, will be commissioned next week by our denomination at the general Assembly. And so we’ll be sort of splitting my, continuing to split my efforts between this small church that I’m serving and teaching in graduate programs in Old Testament, in a seminary in South Asia.

And so that’s kind of, where I’m coming from and, I could say I’m. Curious to hear some of your thoughts or some of the things that came up for you when you read the book. But one of the reasons why I felt the need to write this book, you can probably readers who engage it will, sense that there were things, these were things that I was thinking a lot about before the pandemic came along.

And then I think part of the central point is that many of the pathologies or the shortcomings of the church within the pandemic actually preexisted the pandemic and will continue to cause problems for us if we don’t learn the right lessons from the pandemic. And among other things that I think the book offers that are u that’s unique among books that relate to the COVID Pandemic is first of all, I, there have been many books now that have been written about.

The social and economic costs of the pandemic and many of the scientific mistakes that were made. And I do rely on some of that research in this book. And thankfully there’s social scientists and doctors and other researchers that are doing that kind of work. And that’s really important. But I felt that there was a need for a book of whether, it’s not quite sure whether it’s sacramental theology or public theology or biblical scholarship, but one that addresses the theological, the underlying theological issues that got us where we were, yeah.

Part the pandemic and where we are today. And I also felt that as a, as an Old Testament scholar, I think that often people don’t people lay readers of the Bible or people who are maybe not coming from a Christian perspective, kind of see religion as having this. Just this sort of role of well be nice to people or maybe it provides for some meaning or morality in our lives.

But the morality is often very shallow as just sort of love your neighbor. And so I wanted to provide something that was grounded in truly, deeply grounded in scripture and in parts of scripture that people don’t necessarily think of as being relevant for our public public lives and our personal lives and our lives as Christian community.

And so for all those reasons, this book kind of, poured out of me and was the intersection of many different interests that I had before COVID and then during COVID many distressing and frustrating moments that we all had during that time.

[00:09:02] Jacob Winograd: Right. I do want, I really appreciate your approach to the book because you’re talking about I don’t think you shy away from addressing topics that are tough, but you do it in about, I think, the most gentle and very ecumenical way possible where it’s not about we’re gonna sit here and, hand out report cards, right?

And necessarily grade people in sort of a, who are the faithful ones who didn’t, falter and who are the good, right. It’s not about that. It’s more, the sense I got from what you’re writing is that even when you’re offering, pushback and correction, you say along the lines of this is not meant to attack or divide or bring, it, it’s probably, meant to bring correction, but correction in, in love and in pursuit of truth, and in pursuit of talking about the things you allude to, which is.

A lot of, when I’m reading this book, there was times and I actually consume a lot of my readings through listening, and so I’m listening to the book using my, my my I use a speechify, we don’t have a, an audio book for this yet that I’m aware of. So people might be like, oh, there’s an audio book.

No, I use an a, an app for that. Which you can get it’s very handy for this kind of stuff. But so I’m listening to it and it almost feels like I’m listening to a, like a systematic theology book at the same time, because there are periods of time in the book where you’re, you are laying out almost the way you do in systematic theology, just like what are normative definitions or modes of looking at different parts of society, whether it’s the church, whether it’s science and how we relate to, I think it’s a very important topic that is almost a.

It’s like the underlying bedrock of this entire conversation is how we, as the church relate to modernity, how we relate to science. And not only is there not unity within the church across different denominations, really within denominations, there’s not unity for the most part, I think, on how we approach a lot of this.

And I, my thought, I guess what I’d be curious to get your take on if you agree, I feel like you would, maybe you might, parse it out slightly differently, but I think this, it’s not just, I think there’s definitely a failure to understand the deep history and significance to a lot of why church matters and why the different things we do in church matter and what their significance is beyond just the surface layer.

Of what you alluded to people having just oh, religion performs certain , if it checks certain boxes for human life in terms of how people relate to one another and gives them a sort of cultural things to go off of and certainly I guess it does that as well, but not only does it go deeper than that, it goes deeper than just how we define church.

It’s almost like what is the whole time I’m reading and listening to it, I think the question that’s almost begging to be asked is just what should the biblical worldview be like? Like how do we [00:12:00] define very basic things like society and and science and human institutions?

Right. And I don’t think there’s a, at least, and I can’t speak much about the rest of the world and different countries and whatnot, but at least here in America and I grew up in a very. Mixed evangelical background, like these are not the things that are talked about. Right. And so I feel like that’s a very baseline, fundamental problem.

Is that if you don’t have, those sorts of priors worked out, then you don’t have the basis to answer those higher level questions that you’re also alluding to in the book. I think. So what are your thoughts on that?

[00:12:39] Benj Giffone: Yeah, there’s a lot there. And certainly I would say that one, one of the, one of the things that I felt was important to, well, yeah where to start in this I would say that the book starts with.

I I appreciate your kind words about the, laying it out in terms of a systematic presentation of theology. I’m very much a big picture and systems kind of person. Maybe you can sense that from reading it, but for me, start, we reform folk often are Yes. Right? And I think starting out with first principles about who are we as human beings, what is the chief purpose of man, right?

As the Westminster Confession says that it’s, or the the catechism is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. And so those purposes of humanity to be that we are created in God’s image and created with a purpose to image his glory and his kind benevolent rule into the world. And then to have unencumbered and genuine fellowship with other created beings, other human beings and also with God our creator.

And with the rest of the creation that he’s made. And so, and then sin, of course has introduced corruption into those rela all of those relationships. But then God’s kind work is upset about redeeming and redeeming us back from our rebellion and our sin and the effects of it, and then repairing and restoring those relationships.

Now, that’s all, those are all propositions that I’ve just articulated. And I, they’re all, I believe, thoroughly biblical and true. But what has often as Christians, because we are people of the book and God has given us his revelation in verbal form, not in visual form, except in the person of Jesus Christ when he was on earth.

And it it’s easy for us to then overemphasize. The verbal the words based dimensions of our faith and expressions of our faith. And just thinking about this in the terms of the four classic means of grace, that would be scripture prayer, including songs of prayer and of worship.

The Fellowship of the Saints and the Sacraments. We are very strong. Christians have historically of all stripes, have been historically very strong on the prayer and the scripture. And yet I would say that in, in more recent centuries and especially in certain evangelical circles, which I would identify myself with today, we’ve tended to sort of downgrade those those more ritual or fellowship dependent, physically dependent.

Dimensions of Christian discipleship in the way of Christ. But the analogy that I’ve borrowed from ee Wright in the book is that if you have a, or any kind of relationship, any, but especially a relationship with a family member or a spouse in particular it’s, you can’t say that you are living in the same household or living in the same fellowship, in true fellowship with that person.

If you’re not living there physically present and, you share meals together, you give each other hugs. If you’re married, you enjoy marital intimacy of, of a marital kind. And so these are all things that go along with the words of affirmation and love and the things that you do together.

And so, right the way that these are all things that, that God has called us to. He, we, we can’t do the Christian life alone. We have to do it in embodied community. And he also has given us physical signs of his love that continue to testify to us that we are in right relationship with him.

And that would be the physical sign of baptism and the physical sign of, which is a one-time sign. And then the physical time physical sign of the Lord’s Supper, which is something we do on a regular basis. And so without those, we are so, it’s like our, it’s like living in the same house with someone, but never giving them a hug or never eating a meal with them.

Right. Well, it occurs to me, you could say you love them, but you don’t, but Right. But it’s hard for them to really understand or believe it or live as if it were true. And yet if you do perform these rituals, then there is a sort of, they’re all reinforcing one another. The words. And the rituals reinforce one another to communicate love and true fellowship and relationship.

[00:17:24] Jacob Winograd: Yeah, no, it, it occurs to me, there’s a certain irony to in the evangelical world I grew up in, there was this phrase that I’ve kind of learned to recoil from there. I think there’s some good intent behind it, but I don’t like it where they say, Christianity is not a religion, it’s a relationship.

Right. And I used to say that when I was a kid, and then as I got older and my theology expanded and I got more of a, I think a, actual, more like historic purchase of Christianity, not just the, sort of weird American evangelical vertical slice I was given.

I started to [00:18:00] recoil from that. But I, but like the, so like the steelman, that sentiment they might’ve been pushing a against the sort of mentality that. Viewed Christianity and all religion as a form of legalism and a set of rules. And yeah, to some extent Christianity is different than other religions in that although there are rules, it’s not the rules which, grant us righteousness or special access to, to, to God or to revelation.

It’s it’s rather based on grace and yeah, being born again, being given a new heart. And then we don’t obey the rules to obtain, obtain favor with God, but we go through sanctification so that we can better follow Christ because we love him. But then it’s like, so what I’ve often tried to say, and it’s not as iffy as I’d want it to be, is that it’s a religion because it’s a relationship.

Because I think that’s kinda what you’re getting at, which is that it relationship requires. These sorts of activities, right? If I say I have a relationship with my wife, as you said, but we don’t go out to dinner together. We don’t discuss finances together. We don’t, parent our children together.

We don’t go grocery shopping together. We don’t, do the most, one of the most, foundational acts of marriage, which is, sexual intimacy. We don’t do these things. And it’s like, is is our relationship a relationship or is it just like a list with boxes that we’re checking off?

I think it’s the language I use earlier that does seem to be an unfortunate, and I’m I’m gonna pick a lot on evangelicals in this conversation, not because I hate evangelicals. I am an evangelical, but, so I just feel like I’m just talking to my brothers and sisters and pointing out, weaknesses that we sometimes have in our churches.

I think my church is rather good at this, but it’s just good to always be cognizant and vigilant. But often in, at least here in my experience in America, in ev evangelical churches, it’s been that church is about, checking boxes and that means doing all the things in church are less about their actual meaning or doing it in an intimate way, but just making sure that we make sure that we did it right.

And that could even be how ministry gets done, right? You, you almost have some of these bigger churches that have so many ministries. It just feels like as much as I’m a fan of like decentralization as a libertarian, right? I’m like, like you can it’s not quite micromanaged.

You can over delegate to the point where you have a hundred ministries that it’s not even clear which ones are, supposed to do what? Because some of them have overlapping duties, right? And and so, but that’s because some people get into this almost like church is like a business, and it’s just, it’s about doing things and about it becomes entirely about what you can show on paper, but not about actual substance.

So maybe that’s like where I laid out is kind of a cartoonish version of what evangelical churches and American and Western churches do. And I certainly don’t want to paint with too broad a brush and say that it’s always the case. But that’s, that is a pattern that certainly happens, right?

And I think what you’re getting at is certainly that yeah it’s a relationship. But the relationship does depend upon these rituals, which I think is especially hard. Like I’m reformed ish, but I’m, more of a Baptist in terms of that. So I, I’m not, I guess I could, I’m not historically.

Reform, so to speak. But 1689. Yeah. So I that’s it. I mean, my church my, anyway, I don’t want to make this, go off on a tangent about how my church does things. I could, we could talk about that later, but well, can I

[00:21:33] Benj Giffone: just jump in on something you said there because Yeah. Sure. You were talking about religion and relationship.

I liked the way, I’ve similarly shared that discomfort with that relationship religion dichotomy. Even after, like you said, using it myself in my younger years, like I’m so old right now. But I would say when we look at the, if you look to the Old Testament and see the way that the 10 Commandments begins, it’s, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt.

You will have no other gods before me. Right. And then continues on, and that is. The foundation for all that comes after it, that Yahweh loved Israel because of his loyalty to their ancestors. He has a plan that he’s working of redemption that helps and, blesses all of humanity. But he has a special love for his people, and that was why he saved them.

Now he’s, he genuinely objectively hates injustice and slavery, but he could have brought Israel out of slavery in Egypt and just brought them to the edge of the wilderness and said, okay guys, you’re free. Go be free. Good luck. And I’ve got some other peoples to rescue. But no, he led them to Mount Sinai and he gave them a law which established way the ways that they could have the, it was the terms under which they have a relationship and we all have in every relationship that we have, whether it’s a social.

Relationship or a business relationship or a personal or a family relationship. There are explicit and implicit terms of the relationship. And so, what, when we look at the laws of of Moses that are laid out in Exodus through Deuteronomy, they really are about fellowship and about the re the ability of the Israelites to re, to remain in fellowship with a holy God, and for the God to be able to live in their midst.

That’s really the whole the whole purpose of it. And so, so that the rules are there to set the terms to, to create a context for an ongoing relationship. And one thing that I have observed even what, raised in a form of evangelicalism that didn’t have creeds or confessions, but then discovering these things later on, I found that it seemed like there were.

There was a tendency among [00:24:00] the evangelical churches that I had attended to kind of reinvent rituals or reinvent aspects of either historic liturgy or a Christian practice that I don’t know if someone consciously said we need to have a time of greeting or greeting one another after the first few worship songs in a church service.

But then when I went to an Episcopalian, I just tried out an Episcopalian service when I was in college, I was like, oh, the passing of the peace. That’s kind of, it has a particular purpose in the service, which is to having come into God’s presence and heard the confess our sins and hear, heard the assurance of pardon.

Then we pass the peace of Christ to one another. Yeah. So there is, there, there’s sort of a universality to these rituals. That, at least with within the Christian religion, right. And we find that they are useful. And if we don’t then use them, what, whatever it is from a historic tradition or from the scripture itself, then we often find ourselves reinventing them in some form whether we realize it or not.

[00:25:08] Jacob Winograd: And sometimes, and you might even agree with me on this insofar as we’re both Protestants and so we, we don’t affirm the Catholic system, orthodox system of a, standing priesthood that acts as a intermediary between us and Christ, but there is maybe a baby with the bathwater kind of situation there where it does say in the Bible to confess our sins one to another.

And it does seem like downstream a Protestantism is this sort of it’s, just me and Jesus, and I confess my sins to him, which of course you should. But I have found, and I think a lot of Protestant churches are rediscovering this, that there’s an importance to sharing your struggles and your sins with more than just you and Jesus and your spouse, right?

Maybe at least your pastor or an elder at your church, or like accountability groups have become big things in a lot of evangelical circles. So I could argue it, maybe you can make an argument that you don’t need to do the exact thing or the do what’s being aimed at in the exact same way that maybe churches have done it in history.

But there, those can be pointing to important important elements to our walk as Christians and ways to live out our faith that you need to at least find some way to reconcile. But I think that, so that’s an example where I think. There, there’s a good attempt, I think, by Protestants to kind of rediscover reinvent something in a good way.

I do agree though, a lot of times, like in my churches, has a more contemporary service and then they’ve evolved over time to have what I call like contemporary liturgy. Right. So it’s not just the typical, do six praise songs and then do a 45 minute sermon and leave. They break things up and they do things in a way, and they even use this is almost like our own Yeah.

Like modern liturgy where it’s a, it’s much more interactive, but it’s not necessarily in the exact same way as, if you go to a more traditional mainline Protestant church, the way that they do things at a Lutheran church or a, even like a Methodist church or something like that. I but I do feel like there’s something so like.

It’s funny, my, my wife grew up Lutheran and now she prefers the contemporary stuff. Well, I grew up being the evangelical and the first time I went to a Lutheran service and I saw how other lit just was introduced to the idea of liturgy and the repeating of things and the more involvement of the church congregation and stuff there.

I think that there are attempts at modern churches to reintegrate some of that, but even in my church, I feel like it hasn’t quite they haven’t met that level of they’re doing it just as well. So, do How important is that, do you think? ‘Cause again, I have nothing. For me, it’s not about, and I know for some reformed this gets into the whole, what’s it called?

Like the regulative principle of worship. The regulative principle

[00:27:56] Benj Giffone: of worship,

[00:27:56] Jacob Winograd: right? So I, and so I don’t know. I think I agree with that though. Maybe how we define those parameters can differ between those who are of more contemporary style and those who might. Have more of a traditional style.

But again, that’s one of the things where I think we do need to have honest conversations and thoughtful conversations among, internally with our churches and even perhaps cross denominational to learn from one another. Because I think, certainly while I don’t necessarily think things have to be done the way they were done in a church, Protestant church in, in, in the 17 or 18 hundreds, I also feel like, okay can we all at least agree that when we’re doing the light shows and the smoke machines, that per perhaps that’s the pendulum swing too far and we need a, we need something like church shouldn’t just be a concert with a inspirational speech,

[00:28:48] Benj Giffone: right?

Well, with, at the risk of degenerating into just a worship wars discussion which I think we’re, you and I are kind of. Old enough to remember maybe the tail end of those from the nineties. But here, maybe we lived through them a little bit. But, I embodied that myself and that, I play, I listen to a lot of rock and grunge, music and prefer that style, and yet have become more and more high church and traditional as I get in terms of my preference for the liturgy.

But I think that there’s a few things that I, just that came up, came to mind as we were talking about this. One is that the, there’s often a failure there. There’s a mistake mistaking of emotion or emom for the movement of the spirit of the Holy Spirit that we often see in contemporary oriented churches when, I think that we can recognize that the Holy Spirit is at work when I’m preparing my sermon on a Tuesday, and when the Liturgist is preparing the words [00:30:00] that we’re gonna recite as a prayer on Sunday, when he’s preparing on Monday and when the musicians are practicing, that the Holy Spirit is at work through all of it.

And that the Holy Spirit has been at work in the church in, not just in the last 10 or 20 years, but in the last 2000 years. And I would say going back to the, going back to Abraham, right? That he is, that to, to disregard the historic either hymns creeds confessions is to disrespect the illuminating, not inspiring, but illuminating work of the Holy Spirit.

In though in, in working through believers in ages past. And so we would be foolish to neglect those things and to not make use of them. The other piece that I think we don’t often consider and that I do think is important to consider, and one of the reasons why I wrote this book is that we don’t always account for the ways that technology has accelerated the adoption of different practices into the church.

That without whether they are neutral or negative, or perhaps ultimately positive, we could discuss, I would say the smoke machine is not necessary. Maybe having screens could be good if it allows us to introduce new liturgies and new. Songs, but on the other hand, it allows us to introduce new liturgies and new songs, right?

So it kind of allows for innovation, which can be good or it can be bad. Whereas if you and sometimes just the rapidity of change can be something that can do harm to our lives of discipleship because it then causes us to fetishize or be obsessed with that, which is new and innovative, whereas keeping things, the church that I serve even before I got there, it’s not like I, I’m a transitional pastor, so I’m trying not to make too much change to their practice.

I want them to act based on their convictions, but they don’t have screens. Partly by necessity and partly because they, and partly by conviction we have a paper bulletin and people bring their own bibles to church. We have traditional music that’s sung out of a hymnal for the most part, and we have a stack of hymnals.

And therefore, if the power goes out and the electronic piano that we play, we do have an electronic piano. We don’t have a physical piano ’cause we rent our space. But if the piano doesn’t work or the lights go out, we can still all sing acapella from the hymnal and there’s no, no issue there. If I have prepared my sermon, I can still present my sermon.

We can all sing we can go on unencumbered by the loss of technology. Whereas when you, if we orient our our worship towards the adoption of new technologies to enable the rapid adoption of new forms of music and and liturgy. Then we also kind of leave ourselves vulnerable. And I think that was another thing we saw during the pandemic, that there were some churches that felt, well, maybe we could worship outside, but it really would not be up to our standards.

Like up to what we, and maybe no one said it that way, but if you have a certain way that everyone’s accustomed to worshiping that’s very high tech and has lots of cameras and screens and and awesome guitars, which I love, and bass and drums, as long as they’re done well and you move towards, let’s have a small gathering out in a field because COVID doesn’t spread outdoors that we know of, then that’s a kind of a step down.

Or it feels like a step down when maybe it’s just a step out. But if we set our expectation, if we orient our expectations towards heavy reliance on these technologies than we’re. Then we’re gonna be in trouble when something like this. Right. Well, and I think to, and that, that is what we saw.

[00:34:12] Jacob Winograd: Right? I think to slightly refocus on, this as pertaining to the pandemic. The reason why I think these questions matter is if it’s not obvious. I hope it is, but just to make it more abundantly clear, is that if what church provides can be just equally replicated over a live stream or a Zoom call just think about the implications of what that means.

And also think about the implications of the fact that there are some churches that don’t see the problem, that don’t understand the how degrading that is to to ter. Now, I think you would agree that there are silver linings to the technology, right? That like in the event that people are isolated for whatever reason, right?

That the technology is perhaps better than total isolation in those instances where, some people were, depending on where you lived, what state, what country, literally from government, orders like you cannot leave, not like we encourage you not to leave your home, right?

Or not to have, gatherings of more than a certain amount of people, but at certain times and places it was like, you will not leave your home, you will not meet and whatnot. And, beyond just church we’re not saying we’re not anti-technology, right? I don’t want anyone to think that’s what you’re saying or what I’m saying but rather, I think, lemme put it this way, and we see if you agree with this phrasing that we need to be just like with all things like carefully, thoughtfully, prayerfully considering how we incorporate technology because it can easily become the focus or a a crutch that sort of dilutes what we’re.

What we’re doing and that, that’s why these questions about the sacraments and the importance of how we worship matter and, the, these are tough things. I think [00:36:00] especially not to throw are too many things in the mix, but I’m really curious your thought on this because I was especially surprised that Catholic churches were at certain points, not all of ’em, but there were certain Catholic churches, including the one, there’s a Catholic church within walking distance of my house, and I think for at least a month, maybe even longer, they were not handing out the Eucharist.

And then when they finally started to, they were only doing it like outside over, tiny narrow window slots of time, which I thought alright, well the Catholics have probably the highest view of the Eucharist possible, right? And so, so on one hand it’s so clearly even having a high view of that stuff doesn’t mean you’re immune to.

The pressures of the state. So maybe there’s still something flawed there. But that that’s a point of contention between Baptists and traditional Protestants. Is even, our view of communion. And it does beg the que because like I do fall in the camp of viewing it as mostly symbolic.

I, I wouldn’t say I reduce it to entirely something that’s symbolic, but I think it’s I don’t know that I quite agree with it as a means of grace that, so I think it’s a whole other debate. I think it’s important. I don’t think it’s not, it’s nothing, I don’t think that you can just, to invoke the meme.

I don’t think you can just get Mountain Dew and Doritos and call it communion. Right. I think I think there we should hold communion in high regard. I even wish, like my church is like one of those that only do it like once a month or something like that. And I wish we did it every week. I think it is important.

But. I dunno I think this is a point to, I guess you more traditional types than me on this, is that if you do reduce these things to just being symbolic, then, it is that diminishing the importance of the church and the gathering and the ritual. So I, again, I don’t want this to turn into a, Pato versus Credo Baptist debate.

But it, again, these are important things that I think again, ’cause it, that’s why I brought up the Catholic church. ’cause even they were Catholic churches that even they’re high importance on communion didn’t stop them. But but never, nevertheless, I think that these are important questions to ask.

And certainly myself as a reformed Baptist and evangelical I’m wrestling with, ’cause even though I say because you wanna judge a tree by its fruit, right? And I’m like, I have all these arguments for why I believe in these positions, but they certainly. Did lend themselves towards people diminishing the importance of church when these lockdowns were pushed.

And so that, like I have to be able to at least find some kind of reconciliation there. I think. I think that’d be what your encouragement would be too, is that even if people don’t agree with you on, x, y, or Z doctrine, to be like, okay, if you’re gonna reduce it to just symbolic, like here are these potential costs and trade-offs you need to think about.

[00:38:43] Benj Giffone: Well, I want to address that. And before we go on, I would wanna say something about the use of technology. One of the insights of the field of media ecology, which stands behind a lot of what I wrote in a house divided is that when intro, when we introduce a new technology, it doesn’t just, especially a new communication technology, it doesn’t simply allow us to do the old thing.

Better or more efficiently. It eventually changes the nature of the communication itself and what is possible, right? So it wasn’t just when we introduced writing, it wasn’t just that we could communicate like speaking face to face, but across space and time, it started to change the types of ways that people could think because you can compose texts in written form for reading in ways that are different than when you start when you, if you were to just speak aloud, right?

And the same thing happens when we introduce communication technology, digital communication technology. And I would say that and I think I, the, I make this point in the book that in types of, for types of communication where the. The purpose is simply to exchange information and ideas then or simply to have a conversation.

Then communication technology is great, but once we have the technology part of the problem, what part of what happened in specifically Evangelical churches during the pandemic was that because we as evangelicals placed such a heavy emphasis on the word through prayer and scripture and teaching and singing, that we we got the sense that, oh, as all that happened, all that happens is we’re just brains on sticks and that we could just beam the information from our home office to someone’s home through Zoom or through Facebook Live or whatever, and through, through streaming.

And that. That’s good enough. And that is not, but that is not what worship is and should be about. And my fear is that’s not all that worship should be about. And my fear is that by introducing these kinds of technologies, it not only, it certainly it is good for people who are stuck in their homes, who are home bound and can’t go somewhere for whatever reason.

But at what cost for those who maybe could marginally get to could get to church, but having the live stream or the recording of the service available gives them a little bit more it ba it, it balances the scale a little bit more in favor of, well, I’ll just take my children on this long weekend away and we’ll sit down and watch the service on Sunday night.

Or we’ll even watch it live on Sunday morning

[00:41:41] Jacob Winograd: or even we need, or just

[00:41:43] Benj Giffone: being tired, right? Just being like, oh, we

[00:41:44] Jacob Winograd: were up late last night. Oh, we were traveling and we got, it is, and it also, I mean, it also changes the

[00:41:50] Benj Giffone: structure of how the service can change the structure, because just broadcasting from the back of a sanctuary is not very interesting.

But many churches that did put it [00:42:00] online put something online, actually produced it for online and or changed and maybe even did it separately, which I’m actually have a it’s better than just trying to live stream from the back of the building. But the point is that introducing this communication technology and this whole paradigm of online church it is some, it is a new thing.

It’s not just doing the old thing in a slightly different way. Now, when it, when you talk about the different traditions, it is I did try to write in sort of an ecumenical fashion in the book, even though I’m using terms like sacraments as a reformed person, in my view of the. Sacrament is o of the Lord’s supper and baptism is not the same as the cat Catholic or Orthodox or Lutheran views, but it’s also more, still more so than a Baptist ian or an a Baptist memorial view of what is going on, what actually is happening, that Christ is really present, spiritually present when we observe these sacraments.

However, I find, I found, and maybe I’ll be interested in your experience as well, that there was almost no correlation in the pandemic between a church’s stated beliefs regarding the substantial ness or the significance of the Eucharist or baptism and how. Eager they were to get back to in-person church and communion.

It was all over the map. There were Anabaptist churches that had a strictly zw and memorial view of the Lord’s supper and baptism that were nevertheless very eager to get back together to do their, the ordinances as part of their worship. Right. Not using the term sacrament. And as you said, there were Catholics and Ang High Church, Anglicans and Lutherans that were very much about saying, well, if we just observe it online that’s fine.

Which just struck me even as a non-Catholic as something that Right. Just didn’t make sense. Because if you understand the Catholic view of the Eucharist then,

[00:44:14] Jacob Winograd: right. It’s not

[00:44:15] Benj Giffone: something that can just be done remotely or it’s not the same as observing the priest on Zoom. Yeah. And I think that actually what was more correlated was.

How close the church’s elites and leaders were to elites and centers of power outside of the church. And so you were even within the same denomination that has the same confessions. I would venture to guess that a Christian reformed church in the Dutch reformed tradition in Grand Rapids was very different from which is the center of that denomination in the home of many Christian publishers in Calvin College and Calvin Seminary would’ve been very different from a rural Christian reformed church in Minnesota or Iowa and a Presbyterian church in my own denomination.

Right in New York City or in in in Pittsburgh or something like that, would’ve been much more likely to stay online a lot longer and to follow all of the guidelines. Than a rural church in the same denomination. And I think that, so that, that shows you more. So I think what are the, how the church is thinking about the relationship between the, whatever it is, the ritual, whatever we call them, sacraments or ordinances, how we think about God sacraments and ordinances, rituals, and also our worldview with respect to how do we relate to sources of knowledge and meaning and morality outside of scripture and Christian tradition.

What inputs are we getting from the surrounding culture, from the government, from science, from universities? And I think that was much more determinative rather than the on paper. Yeah, paper theology. And I would have much more in common with the Anabaptist church that. Didn’t believe the same thing I did about the real presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper, but nevertheless wanted to meet together to celebrate the Lord’s Supper then with a Presbyterian church that stayed online for months and even years, or tried to practice some form of online communion because they were concerned about following the science.

[00:46:34] Jacob Winograd: Yeah, no, I think so. Like everything that we just talked about I think is kind of aimed at one question. When the government said only essential services are allowed to operate, why was the response of the church not, we are highly essential across the board. Right. And I don’t, and again, I think we would both say that’s not meant to be I mean, I guess I hope to some extent it is a convicting question, but it’s not said in condemnation, but.

But rather to be like, let’s think about this. Because if it happens again to any degree what message are we saying? What kind of testimony is it to the gospel? I think if we tell people like, like on one hand, the we offer the message of hope and salvation to the world, but also it doesn’t matter.

What we do every Sunday really doesn’t matter. It’s not essential. I just think that doesn’t work. And it also relates to what you do cover in your book. And we don’t have tons of time to, to cover, but I’ve talked about it on my show and I encourage people to look more into it.

But again, related to some of our, what we talked about at the beginning about just like what is your theory of what society is and what science is and what the church is and whatnot. And I know you are as well, I’m especially drawn to the reform, especially the the Dutch reform through people like hyper and.

Ver and and others who have taken a lot of the ideas of what’s called like sphere sovereignty. [00:48:00] And then there’s different camps in there. And there, this gets into, there’s a lot of you, so there’s two kingdoms, there’s one kingdom, there’s comprehensive kingdom. There’s a lot of different ways of parsing.

What’s the relationship between the kingdoms of this world and the kingdom of heaven, and where does the church fit into all that? Again, I think these are questions that I think different faith traditions are going to somewhat land in different areas. And we could definitely argue for why we think the reform to have a better answer.

But the point is not enough people have been even thinking about these questions to even have answers that would come to bear to when these pandemics and when the pandemic and these lockdowns were launched. So. You got just kind of a surface level reading of, well, Romans 13 says, submit to the governing authorities.

So that’s the, that one line is just, completely exhaustive of what the Christian worldview says regarding government edicts, I guess. Which, you know I say obviously, hopefully with a heavy detectable amount of sarcasm. But Ben, what’s your we’ll have to close after this, but what’s your thoughts on just that aspect of it, of the, ’cause we’re obviously talking here on the libertarian Christian institutes live stream in the green room.

You publish this with us here at LCI what’s the I more, most important question or truth that people need to be asking themselves regarding how they define that relationship between church and state?

[00:49:24] Benj Giffone: Yeah, I mean, the way you framed it the start was of what you said just now was.

Do we as Christians really believe that what we have been entrusted with, what has been given to us, the message of the gospel is essential and transforms individuals and transforms our social relationships. Now, like you said, Christians can have different response, can have different views of the ways that Christians relate within the state.

And obviously Christians do di differ on this. And we come from a standpoint that’s either has minimal or no role for the state in forcing relationships to exist or not exist. Where there, where it’s not voluntary, but I think where the church needs to really, kind of search. We need to search our hearts, especially those of us who are Christian leaders.

Like I’m a pastor, right, and a professor and a missionary is. The question of do we really believe that we have that when Peter when the disciples said to Jesus, he said, are you gonna leave me too? When many of his disciples stopped following him and they said, Lord, to whom shall we go?

You have the words that the words of eternal life. And I think it was easy, it was too easy for us as Christian leaders to get caught up in this in the, in a, maybe a laudable desire to engage with elites and structures of authority outside of the church. We were concerned about being perceived as res as irre, respectable it was not respectable enough or perceived as anti-science or anti too anti-authority that that.

We, that we as Christians, who that tho those of us who were maybe skeptical about what the authorities were saying were casting, were causing people to we were discrediting Christianity by not acting in a rational way, not acting in a loving way. And I would say that we have to, number one, define love in such a way that includes the totality of the human person.

So that advocating for people, so people’s ability to choose to go to church and people to go to their jobs and their vocations and go to schools, that is a form of love to, for our fellow human beings. It’s not unloving to advocate for freedom and for people to go to church. And also I think we, we saw a, we saw that the idle, that idol of respectability was right alongside the idol of of scientism and of this idea that science can, does that. We don’t just take insights about the natural world from science, but also meaning and morality. And so once science, once scientism was allowed to co-opt the gospel and actually the practice of science real science, which is experimental and progressing and always evolving then that was where I think the church especially many in the church failed.

And that is a difficult idol for us to recognize because it’s not because science is something that Christians should practice. Just like love of neighbor is something that. Christians should practice. No. We were commanded to practice. And yet what happened was this switch of something that was valid and even commanded love of neighbor scientific method for something else.

That something else was smuggled in this these these claims to be able to provide meaning and morality and to define what love is in ways that were not biblical or Christian.

[00:53:28] Jacob Winograd: Yeah.

[00:53:29] Benj Giffone: And so we have to constantly be on the lookout for for those errors. And also look at the way, look at the results, look at the ways that it’s harming people in our congregations and in our churches.

And that’s not determinative or that’s not it doesn’t. That’s not definitive, let’s say, but it is, should be an indication to us that something else is being smuggled in here other than just good intentions and truths from [00:54:00] authority structures outside the church.

[00:54:04] Jacob Winograd: Well, well said. If I was gonna I’m gonna, I’m gonna make a short sentence here and then let you close out with some plugs and closing thoughts.

But if I, there, there’s a lot there. I would encourage people to, ask the question of when does the state, when does civil government have the right to instruct the church on what to do? And, we obviously have our answers here, but these are questions that need to be asked and not enough people have thought about.

And in terms of the because I really think you’re spot on with the concern about respectability, but I just think we have to, rank order our obligations and the passage, which is often, quoted at us to maybe push a very, state sadist sort of perspective.

I think actually says the opposite, which is one Peter two 17. And it, it puts everything in perspective. It says, honor everyone, love the brotherhood. Fear God, honor the emperor. So we can honor those who are in authority, even those who are using their authority in ways that we disagree with. And so we don’t have to be rude, we don’t have to be like vile or unnecessarily.

I don’t know. Like we, we should be willing to stand on our principles, but we don’t have to do so in a way just, we have examples of this in scripture, right? I mean, there are so many instances. My favorite being Daniel three, where God’s people say, listen, you have this edict sorry, we’re not gonna listen to that.

Because to do that would be to disobey our Lord. It’s just that simple. And then if consequences come, we we go into that fire knowing that we don’t go in alone. And as Meshach Radack and Ab Bendigo said, the Lord will save us, or he won’t. But either way, we won’t bow to you. So, that’s where I stand at least.

Any final thoughts, Ben? And of course, I’ll tell Remind people that they can get your book@housedividedbook.com. But any closing thoughts? And if you wanna tell, and I also, if you’re going again, if you are going to Freedom Fest and the upcoming week, you’ll get a chance to meet some of our folks from LCI, including Ben as well as Cody Cook, who has written our other book this year, the Anarchist and a Baptist.

So yeah, a lot of good stuff. Ben, it was good talking with you. And I thoroughly enjoyed your book and hope to talk with you again in the future. Any closing thoughts for us?

[00:56:14] Benj Giffone: Yeah, thanks for the conversation. I really enjoyed it as well, and I look forward to seeing some of you at Freedom Fest when it comes to the, that passage in, in first Peter, and just overall thoughts.

Obviously, even Peter and elsewhere, Paul and other figures in the New Testament they were dealing with authorities that were a lot more pernicious and anti-Christ than most of the authorities that were, at least in Western countries trying to enforce things. And I would say most people were most police and other authorities were just exhaustedly trying to enforce.

They were just trying to do their jobs. Now there’s a point at which, that’s not an excuse for things that happen. But what I would say is that is respectfully that. There is, there’s a purpose for government there that is laid out in scripture that is very that is nevertheless unable to fully account for the purpose of worship and Christian fellowship because that’s not its goal.

And so when Jesus said, render unto Caesar what is Caesars and to God, what is Gods, he was drawing a distinction between those two. And when Caesar tries to take what is rightfully god’s, then the right response is to say, respectfully, that’s not something that is is yours to take. And and so as Christian believers we, hopefully we won’t face something like, cOVID 29 or, whatever they’re cooking up in the labs next. But whatever the situation is next, we, I think we have to be prepared to say, to stand and say that no, this is something that God has commanded us to do. And for our good and for yours because to the extent that that this land wherever we, whatever it is that we live, whether it’s in Europe or Africa or Asia or North America to the extent that people are worshiping the triune God and learning to love one another and genuinely love their neighbor in meaningful and true ways, then that is going to be for the common good.

And even if authorities who tried to stop Paul and the apostles from sharing the good news in different places where they went, even if they didn’t recognize it, that was the good news that was. Going to ultimately transform their world and transform, eventually bring down in a sense the the evil of the Roman Empire.

And and so there was a cheerful resistance and persistence that we see amongst Christians in the early church that we need to learn from and and follow

[00:59:08] Jacob Winograd: Amen to that. I’ve been going through church history and the early church is just filled with so many, some of the stories are a bit apocryphal at times, but even then there’s just a, there’s a very strong pattern there, which is exactly the way you laid it out.

[00:59:22] Benj Giffone: And I would say, sorry to also be but in, in the global church too, right? I mean, yeah, I know Christians all over the world. I’m very blessed to have to know people from different contexts and. There are places where the church is really under fire and is under persecution, but the love that those brothers and sisters have for Christ and they know what they’ve, what they have and what they are giving up socially or in terms of their safety or their wellbeing to follow Christ.

We can learn from them. And I wish that I had the same love for Christ that my persecuted brothers and sisters have. So we don’t just have to, we can look to the early [01:00:00] church for sure, but we can also look for our examples to those who stand firm under other kinds of persecution today.

[01:00:07] Jacob Winograd: Alright, well that’s it for this episode.

I hope you enjoyed this conversation with bench phone and gave you a lot to think about. The questions, again, they’re not just about rehashing the lockdowns, but it’s about understanding the role of the church and the church to future. Again when COVID hit, there was too many churches that.

Had a improper response, I think, and I think it’s because we weren’t asking these questions beforehand. We weren’t having these conversations beforehand. We didn’t understand the essentialness of what church is that? The sacraments, the worship, the corporate gathering of believers. These aren’t just.

Secondary or bonus aspects to our faith and our walk with Christ. But these are essential components to living as Christians in this world. So hope you enjoyed that. Hope it was edifying. If you want to again, get benches book and read it, you can go to house divided book.com and as I always conclude by saying, live at Peace, live for Christ.

Take care.

[01:01:10] Narrator: The Biblical Anarchy Podcast is a part of the Christians for Liberty network, a project of the Libertarian Christian Institute. If you love this podcast, it helps us reach more with a message of freedom when you rate and review us on your favorite podcast apps and share with others. If you want to support the production of the Biblical Anarchy Podcast, please consider donating to the Libertarian Christian institute@biblicalanarchypodcast.com, where you can also sign up to receive special announcements and resources related to biblical anarchy.

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