03/05/2025 – David Congdon and American Religious Identity

Today we’re having a conversation with David Congdon about Christian identity. Check this out. This is TenOnReligion.

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David Congdon wrote an interesting book titled, Who Is A True Christian: Contesting Religious Identity in American Culture. He currently works at the University of Kansas Press and teaches in the Religious Studies department. Here’s our conversation.

Dr. B.: Hello, we are here with David Congdon, who works and teaches at the University of Kansas. How are you doing today, David?

David: I'm doing great, Mark. Thanks for having me on here.

Dr. B.: Alright, he's an expert on Christian Nationalism and a bunch of other topics as well. So I've got a laundry list of things for us to talk about today, and we're going to grill David and see what he has for us. So I'm just going to get right into it because we've got a lot of heavy hitters here today. So my first question is, defining Christian identity is a construction, and to me it should seem obvious that this is the case. Why does it seem like it's not obvious to most Christians living in America today?

David: Yeah, that's a good question. I think it's a hard one to answer. But my instinct here is that a lot of us grew up and are kind of told how to think about religion in a certain way. We assume religion is about accessing these transcendent, eternal, divine values, revelations, truths that are immutable and are immune to human opinion, construction, historical change. And so that idea about religion is so deeply held, so deeply pervasive in American culture, I think outside of the US as well, of course. And so there's just, I think, an kind of inborn resistance to this idea that humans are, in some sense, responsible for and have constructed what it means to be religious, to hold to a religion. This, of course, is very much deeply part of Christian history and Christian theology, this idea that whether it's the Bible being a collection of inerrant facts or papal encyclicals being infallibly inspired by God coming down, various levels of ways of construing religion, especially Christian religion, as accessing something that is simply coming down from on high. And so if we describe this as being humanly constructed, humanly manufactured and developed, interpreted and the rest, there's a sense in which that is sacrilegious. That's a violation and an offensive rejection of the religion itself. And so we're taught to be very respectful of religion, to honor religious traditions. And I think as Americans, we think the way to honor a religious tradition is to respect its truth claims and to assume that those truth claims must mean that any suggestion of human construction is rude at best and worse, something heretical, deeply dismissive. Something that only a crude new atheist would ever say. So I think that's this kind of built in assumption about religion that has really made it difficult for us as Americans to really explore this topic, honestly.

Dr. B.: Yeah, and as you were talking, I was thinking I saw you at the American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting in San Diego last November, we were talking about your book, you know, that I have here, Who is a True Christian? And so, and part of that was talking about Karl Barth and sort of a follow up to this question, is it that even modern American evangelicalism is too rooted in Barth with this religion from above mentality and that there's no human sort of contribution to that? Is that part of it?

David: I think that's a big part of it. I mean, certainly evangelicalism's relationship with Barth is a complicated one. True. They were certainly very anti-Barth for a long time, because Barth rejected things like biblical inerrancy. And so, you know, but I do think contemporary evangelicalism, especially that sort of what we might call moderate or centrist evangelicalism that's rooted in places like Wheaton or Christianity Today, that has become very Barthian. And I think they've latched on to Barth because of this very issue. Barth represents this attack against liberalism, this attack against the notion that religion is historical, historically constructed, humanly, you know, developed over time, something that that is, you know, open to reconstruction redefinition, all those liberal tropes. So Barth is this is this bulwark against liberalism. And for evangelicals today who want to be intellectually sophisticated, Barth is very attractive for that very reason. And so I think there's a big part of that. But I mean, Barth himself is himself rather complicated on this matter. And I think it's, you know, it's ironic that Barth's own opposition to what he called liberalism and this idea of God and revelation being transcendent was itself politically motivated, right, to oppose the way that religion got co-opted by political regimes and political movements. So it's rather ironic now that that same move by Barth that was politically rebellious against the social political order has now been allowed Christianity and evangelicalism to be co-opted by the political order. So that same move can have a double meaning to it. And I think that's one way in which the evangelicals who now champion Barth are not themselves very faithful to Barth.

Dr. B.: That's fascinating. So the philosopher John Locke was one of the early ones to talk about a separation between religion and government. And then it was later done for through Roger Williams experiment in Rhode Island where for Roger Williams, it was this has made an oversimplification. But he felt that the church was a thing that was sacred and especially wanted to seal it off from the government as opposed to 100 years later, Thomas Jefferson reversed that. He thought the government was sacred, especially wanted to seal it off from religion. So my question is, has the John Locke separation paradigm failed? Was it only like nominalism, a name, and never in place practically despite Roger Williams and Thomas Jefferson's, you know, attempts or efforts?

David: I would say, you know, this is a good question because I think Locke is I've become very interested in Locke actually recently. And I think my view on this is that the Lockean paradigm as it has been received, the kind of the mainstream understanding of Locke's view on this matter is has an internal ambiguity to it. So that, you know, I've been reading a lot of the kind of early Christian nationals, what we might call Christian nationalists today. But I'm thinking in particular, people who are part of the Confederate South who were pro-slavery Christians. A lot of those folks like James Henley Thornwell, Robert Dabney, folks like that were very strong proponents of a church state separation. Now, that might strike us as odd and counterintuitive. But the reason is that a church state separation for the Confederate South allows the church in their minds to be hands off regarding slavery. The church can't say anything about slavery. That's a state matter. That's a political domain. So the church state separation actually allows religion and allows Christianity to remain supreme and, you know, and to justify the social political order. So I think in that sense, you know, the Lockean paradigm as they understood it was perfectly in place and has and still remains in place for a lot of today's Christian nationalist types. Of course, there are other people who are opposed to Locke entirely, right? The post liberals who think that Locke and the liberal experiment was flawed all the way through, you know. So I think there's an internal tension within the Lockean paradigm. My own view, though, however, is that the actual Locke's actual position wasn't really ever put into practice, at least not fully, because I think the Lockean liberal paradigm is a very, very important thing. The Christian liberal framework, the liberal compromise that Locke wants to put in place, it has two sides to it that are both important. There is the political dimension, which requires the state to be limited in with respect to religion. So free exercise, disestablishment, all the rest, right? So there's that side of the equation, how politics relates to religion. But Locke also understood that the religious side also has to be constrained, that religion cannot claim to have a universal orthodoxy that speaks for all people. It cannot claim truths that are absolute that then pertain to people irrespective of their personal commitment. And so there's a constraint that religion has to adopt. Religion has to accept that it has a limited scope, that it has limited power, limited applicability. And on that side of the equation, I don't think most Christians in the U.S. have ever fully embraced that side of the Lockean compromise. I would say no. Right. And that's where we're seeing the real problem. So it's not just church-state separation, but it's rather state and church both having a mutual understanding of their own limitations and constraints. And that really is something that religion has pushed back against and never really wanted to adopt.

Dr. B.: Okay. In light of that, I have a kind of a convoluted question, so people are listening to you. Just hang out with me for a second while I explain my question here. So the events of the 1970s for people who know recent American history included the founding of the Heritage Foundation, the masking of white supremacy and other issues like-- They mask white supremacy with other issues like initially abortion, later gun rights in the 1990s, and later gender issues now in the 2000s. So going to your book, on page six, you wrote, "A key reason why abortion, gender, and sexuality are the center of the conversation today is that, except for isolated pockets, religious leaders across the board acknowledge that white supremacy is morally indefensible as a narrative binding a community together." Now, you wrote this book, obviously, before the 2024 election. So after the 2024 U.S. presidential election, is that still the case?

David: I want to say I think it still is. Now, it is certainly the case that the second Trump administration is pushing at the very limits of this model. I think my quote there is still framed in terms of what religious leaders acknowledge. And so I still think on the religious leaders side of that equation that, by and large, most of them are not coming out and saying that it's OK to have a church based around whiteness. We're not seeing that. I don't know if we'll ever really see that. And that's partly because the current leaders of the Christian right are often very multiethnic. We're seeing Latino Protestants. We're seeing Korean Pentecostals. These are some of the leaders of the current Christian right movement. So I think it's probably unlikely that we'll see a full-on neo-Nazi approach, kind of a KKK mentality of Christianity. That certainly has always been there and will still continue to be there in certain pockets. But it's not, I don't think, going to be a widespread mainstream position that people will advocate for. Certainly, though, what we're seeing in the administration itself is a rather different matter, at least. But even there, one of the things I want to—I'm working on right now, something I want to kind of highlight is the use of the rhetoric. What the Trump administration has done very cleverly is use the rhetoric of racial justice and religious liberty to promote white supremacy and Christian supremacy. And that's very clever on their part. It's insidious, but it's something that the left has not grappled with adequately. So, for example, in the recent executive order from Trump regarding South Africa, which was a very blatantly racist executive order about how the white Africaners are being unjustly discriminated against by the black South African government. So it's completely absolving the white settler, colonialists, of their apartheid regime. It's ignoring that, and it's only looking at them now as purely morally innocent victims of the current government. And so the executive order is absurd and clearly is promoting white supremacy. But it's being framed in terms of racial justice, that there is a discrimination and racial injustice being perpetrated against these white Africaners. That's one example among hundreds that the Trump administration is exploiting. And the religious liberty one has been talked about to death by many other people. But when you frame a group, in this case, Christians or white Americans, as the persecuted victims of an elite cabal of liberals and woke people, then you can frame their movement, their position as one of racial justice or religious liberty, even when the actual opposite is the case. And so it's a clever rhetorical move. And so all that to say, when we're looking at things like white supremacy, abortion, gender, sexuality, the rhetoric is being is very carefully being used here. So I don't think we're going to see white supremacy being lifted up as a model. We will see things like justice for white people, you know, racial justice for the average everyday hardworking American. You're going to see language like that, which in effect will be white supremacy, but it'll be clothed in the language of racial justice.

Dr. B.: And people won't know the difference?

David: Right. No. I think people will see that and say, this is this is the American spirit of democracy moving forward. This is this is the original, you know, Declaration of Independence vision of, you know, all people are created equal being realized.

Dr. B.: Yeah. All right. Rich white landowners being created equal.

David: Right.

Dr. B.: OK. So let me jump ahead in your book way, way farther to page 232. I'm going to do a quote and make a comment about it. So you wrote the anti-modern essence of Christianity is purity culture writ large. It is an effort, however, fantastical to keep the ecclesial and political body pure from the taint of modern society. Now, I recently interviewed Sarah Moslener on Evangelical purity culture based on her book Virgin Nation. And we had a great talk a few weeks ago. But your quotation goes far beyond just human sexuality. If purity culture is the answer, then what was the question? I mean, what are the fears that are motivating this Christian purity culture movements?

David: Yeah. I'm glad you brought up that quote because this this chapter of the book originally began as an effort to use the framework of purity culture to really explain kind of the weaponization of Christianity in contemporary politics. And I actually I've spun that off into a separate book that I hope to write someday on kind of the intellectual theological history of purity culture. Because I think we see purity culture discourse going back to really to early Judaism before the Christian movement. And then up through, you can really narrate the entirety of Christian history in terms of a concern about purity and how to maintain purity. And we see that most virulently, of course, in basically in American history regarding issues of Jim Crow laws and black kids not being allowed to swim in a pool with white children because of contamination from their diseases and whatever, their blood is going to contaminate them. All that stuff is part of this larger purity framework. In terms of the question here, I mean, obviously, one obvious answer here is just the problem is difference. The problem is otherness in the most broad sense. I think purity culture is a way of managing those differences by excluding them by saying we're going to create a place that is pure from the from the influences of other cultures, other ways of life. And we're just going to exclude them. So the creation of evangelical subcultures is largely this purity culture mentality being constructed, that separatist mentality that separate from the secular heathen society and maintain ourselves in a way that's pure from that influence. Certainly things like the Amish and Mennonites other groups have adopted that in a more kind of rigorous social political sense. But I think evangelicalism as a whole has tried to do that in its own kind of cultural subcultural way. But in my book, what I'm doing is I'm trying to point to the deeper underlying idea at the root of all this. And I argue that idea is orthodoxy. I think orthodoxy as a—understanding orthodoxy as a system of control frames orthodoxy as a purity culture enterprise. If you look back to the fourth century and even earlier than that, but the early kind of early Christian theologians who were kind of constructing orthodoxy originally, their mentality, their view was that truth has to be uniform. It has to be held by all people in the exact same way. So if a doctrine is true, everyone in that community has to hold that exact doctrine and they have to believe it and mean it the same way. So uniformity is a sign of truth. And so any differences of opinion on a doctrine or whatever the issue might be at the time had to be excluded, had to be ostracized. And I think the revolution that happens in the fourth century for Christianity is the realization that we need political power to achieve this vision of pure Christianity. And so Constantine becomes that witting or unwitting agent of Christian purity culture. And so that's the underlying logic, in my view, of Christianity throughout is this attempt to maintain purity of some kind. And what I'm ultimately arguing in my book is we need to undo that logic. We have to find a way to think about Christianity that doesn't subscribe that logic of purity.

Dr. B.: Okay, so that goes as you know, directly to my next question. So continue on a page a few pages over on page 248. You said if culture is hybrid, sort of this anthropological view, then Christian culture is synchronistic. So I said that wrong, syncrestic. And that would defeat the whole purpose of talking about Christianity as a culture. So if the pursuit of purity was the point, but that pursuit could only ever lead to this, as you just talked about it, the imperialistic suppression of difference and the instigation of cultural and religious warfare. So what's the antidote to all of that?

David: Yeah, so the underlying idea here is Christian culture. Christian culture is a problem only because we assume that Christian culture has to be defined by orthodoxy. So as long as orthodoxy reigns supreme as the logic that is constructing and holding together our vision of Christianity, then that any vision of Christianity as a culture is going to be imperialistic by definition, because it has to then exclude anything that will possibly alter that culture. So the antidote to this is something that allows for cultural difference to be internal to Christianity. And that's the challenge. That's what currently is being resisted by most forces, most theologians, certainly those on the Christian right who want uniformity. They want hegemony. And so the question really ultimately is, is Christianity going to go the route of authoritarianism or fascism or democracy and pluralism? But those are the options. And in order to go the route of democracy and pluralism, you have to rethink what it means to be Christian. It doesn't require orthodoxy as its structuring principle. Now, my proposal in my book is what I call "polydoxy," which is a framework that incorporates difference to be internal to Christianity. I don't think that's the only possible route to take. That's just one route that I think is commendable and worth exploring. But the challenge here is how do you overcome orthodoxy? That's the underlying problem.

Dr. B.: Okay, so this, the next question, by the way, to all our viewers, I created a list of questions, a line of questions that sort of flow from each other. There's a method of the madness here, but I'm mostly a philosopher of religion, and so you talk a lot about hermeneutics as one of my main subject areas. So we humans recreate the past based on the present. This is basic philosophical hermeneutics from Gadamer. Interpretation starts with us. Now, manufacturing educational obstacles to understanding simply allows political or religious leaders to play power games with large groups of followers. Yet holding on to myths and symbols, a lot of scholars tell us, it's an important part, and dare I say so to some cases, psychologically healthy part, of human existence in society. So how can religion be used for good instead of exploitation, power games and ill will and things like that?

David: To the extent that I understand your question here, I think, I'm sure I boil it down to what the essence here, which is, you know, kind of your final question there. How does religion function in a healthy way in society? I mean, I think it comes down to what kind of what kind of social imagination does religion foster? So the word myth there is a way of getting at this point. I mean, so I am one of my other area of research is in issues of mythology and hermeneutics. And so I really like the work of Bruce Lincoln on this issue of how myth functions to kind of mobilize and form a community's kind of internal narrative, how they understand themselves, what gathers them together, what propels their action. You know, so myth functions at that level. Right. And so I think in that sense, yes, we all have our different mythologies, myths that are functioning to kind of frame how we see the world, how we see ourselves that motivate certain actions over other actions. I do think that religion, including Christianity, has the capacity to provide a mythic framework that can compel more altruistic, more other-focused and difference-oriented ways of living together. I do think one of the one of the things we're seeing in society right now is a tension between different views of what the Christian mythos is. You know, some are seen in Christianity a mythos of pure authority and obedience, right, in which it's a matter of subjugating those who need to be subjugated and maintaining the power and authority of those who are you want to maintain that status quo. But there are certainly many others who see a very different vision of Christianity. I mean, as we all know, the Black Church has been about that for a long, long time. But other groups have are advocating for a vision of Christianity that is liberative, that is emancipatory, that is empowers a way of being in society that is open to difference, open to plurality and doesn't demand obedience as a sign of one's participation in the group. So I don't have an answer for what that mythos necessarily will look like fleshed out. I think there are multiple different options. I think there are certainly resources within the Bible, within Christian tradition, to foster that kind of mythology, that kind of framework of thinking in life. We have them available to us. I think it's a matter of how we emphasize those elements and bring that narrative to bear. If I can take a little detour here, you know, one of the things that I've been working on in my day job as an editor for the University Press of Kansas is there's a book that I've been working on, which is about what the author calls kind of mending stories of democracy. So there's a whole side of this that's on the political side, that's very much like the religious side. There are stories about what it means to be American that are inherently authoritarian and exclusionary, rooted in domination of native cultures and all the rest. But there's another side of the American narrative, the American mythos, that is open to democracy, open to difference, you know, about equality, egalitarianism, you know, those values. And so I think we're seeing the same kind of question, same kind of story that you're talking about happening in the political conversation, political theory, that I'm also trying to kind of demonstrate on the religious side. I think we need both, both mythos need to be in operation. We need a political narrative about what it means to be part of this nation, a part of this larger political community. And we also need stories about our religious communities. And both of those need to be oriented toward a vision of beloved community or of life together that is, you know, open to, you know, really about, you know, a liberative model of living together that allows for us to have differences of opinion, differences of views that we can coexist in that mentality in a healthy way.

Dr. B.: Yeah. Well, I think I was just reading on social media the other day, somebody was saying, why is the idea of Christianity to take away people's money, food and medicine and give it to people who are rich? I mean, isn't that the opposite of things like the Sermon on the Mount and so on and so forth? Why aren't we drawing from those resources rather than, you know, other resources that allow these actions to take place, which just seems really, well, like you say, like your earlier discussion, is just flipping the script with irony and being very clever about the rhetoric and so on and so forth.

David: Yep. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, those resources are all there. We have them available to us. I think it's the challenge is that there's no incentive for certain groups to make use of those resources. You know, their own power, their own money, their own stability and cultural dominance is threatened by those very elements. And so they are going to lean hard in the other direction on a different set of narratives and stories and mythos. And that's the problem. There's the incentive structure is against them moderating their views on this.

Dr. B.: Yeah, it. So let me tell a story. This is the most I've ever talked to in any interview I've ever done for some reason. I'm not really sure why, but usually I just ask questions and then listen. But so Jean-Paul Sartre, a French philosopher, provided an interesting example. He tells a story about a person who walks down a hallway in a hotel. And this is before our modern hotels with key cards. And so there was actually a key with a keyhole and say, say he's somebody looks down and starts, you know, peeking into the keyhole just to watch what he can see inside the room. Oh, that looks interesting. What are those people doing? Right. And then that person is not thinking about themselves. They're absorbed to what's going on in the room. Then somebody else comes walking down the hallway and sees somebody hunched down looking at the keyhole and like, OK, that's an awkward social situation. Right. And so and then the person looks up and they see the person looking at them down the hallway like, oh, you know, it's so then that's something they, you know, they feel this this shame. And they realized that they were looking at something. They were a subject looking at an object, something that the keyhole. But now they are the object. Somebody else is the subject looking at them looking at the keyhole. Right. And so and then the reason why he started to tell the story is he says humanity as a whole cannot become conscious of itself like as an object of another subject. You know, in that case, being God. And so, however, you know, when you look at the history of religion, I mean, going way, way back thousands of years, the whole idea of the feeling of being sort of like watched gives us the sense that. We recognize an authority, whether it be a religious, a political authority, you know, and then sociologists and anthropologists tell us that humans survive better in groups, but we need authority figures. Now, all that was a set up my one simple question, which is we recognize the authority of someone else when we have some sort of an existential connection with them. And but when when that goes awry, I mean, how do we change someone's existential connection to that authority? I mean, we have, you know, obviously, you know, we have examples like Trump, but you can use many other examples when you when you when you when you start to buy in and have an existential connection with that authority. But, you know, how does somebody else try to sever that connection? Is that even possible?

David: I'm gonna I'm not sure if I buy the premise of the question. Okay, to be fair. I mean, I think it's if I understand you correctly, the premise, the assumption here is that we need authority figures, we have a built in natural predisposition to have an authority that we view as watching us and that we need that psychologically to exist in our society, you know, as part of a larger human group. I'm not so sure that's the case. I think I think we have been socialized to think that to view that way. You know, I think that is part of what religion has done to kind of tap into that. But I mean, I don't think that's the only way for humans to operate in society. And I think it's actually something we need to push back against. And to resist that that way of thinking leads to a sort of a sort of a willingness to accept a surveillance state, to accept religious invasions of privacy, to accept state invasions of privacy, you know, it provides the framework that justifies an authoritarian social structure. And so I do think we have to push back against that and instead inculcate within people an acceptance and real and belief strongly that they don't require an authority figure to be micromanaging their existence as a condition for their belonging in a community. I think what we need to shift from is instead a model that is authoritarian to a model that is consensual. That is that my place in society is a matter of my mutual consent to the structures and norms and regulations that govern how we live in society. I think that's what the liberal experiment was about. You know, is a the social contract mentality is a in theory, a consensual model of self-governance, right? And so I think that's, that's, that's something that we need to move towards, but, but really to fully realize that will require a revolution really, and the social structures of society. This is what I think somebody like Marx was really trying to get towards. However flawed his approach to it was, ultimately, it's about a democratic society of equals consensually organizing themselves to live together in a harmonious way, where goods are, you know, in shared proportion to their needs and all the rest. That's, that's a vision that's a, that's a way of seeing oneself and seeing society that doesn't require a hierarchical authority, determining your way of being in the world. And so in I do think religion has been resistant to that for obvious reasons. We have a mythos that is all about a person in the sky, viewing us from above and determining our, you know, providentially determine every move. But I do think there are resources in religion and in Christianity in particular, to offer a different way of seeing ourselves.

Dr. B.: Yeah, yeah, that's good. That's good. And I think some of that now, of course, Sartre, who I started with was doing that more from a non-religious perspective, obviously, but I was trying to sever the connection. But it, but you feel like there's a way to keep the connection, but still, not have this, like you say, you know, eye in the sky.

David: Well, I mean, there are yeah, I mean, we have to really get into this, we'd have to kind of really probe what it means to be in a group, what group identity means and looks like, I think, here, I want to get into like ritual theory. You know, there are lots to explore their Harvey Whitehouse's material is very good. And I think, you know, we can, there's a lot to unpack there in terms of different models and frames for thinking about group identity, group, group community, what hold what binds us together, you know, what, what mechanisms do we need to hold a society, a community, you know, to in some sort of unity of some kind, you know, what does that look like? I think there are, there are a lot of different tools at our disposal to can flesh that out. But I think we should resist the assumption that a kind of hierarchical authority structure is required for that.

Dr. B.: Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. I so you've already hinted at a few things. What's next for you as far as scholarship is concerned, you have a you just published this book, Who is a true Christian?, and then the question is running Christian identity. So what's the next logical step after that?

David: Well, the logical step isn't necessarily going to be what I do next. Fair enough. I have a couple book projects that I'm working on that are, you know, related, but not the logical step after this. The logical step for me, for sure, is a book on polydoxy, which is something that I am sketching out and working on. But it's probably two or three books down the road for me. But that book is necessary for a lot of reasons. I, you know, my introduction of polydoxy only comes in the conclusion to this book. And, you know, I think it certainly, you know, a lot of people want it wanted it to be more complete than it is, which is understandable. The book is not meant to be a book about polydoxy, it's meant to kind of frame the problem that gets us to the need for a solution. So I do need to write the book on the solution itself and what I think that will look like. So that's coming. I also have a project that I hope to write soon, which also is a few books down the road is on post liberalism and what it looks like to be go beyond post liberalism. A lot of the current this current book on who is a true Christian is about Christian post liberalism and how it contributed to the current situation that we're in. And I have an article coming out in the Journal of Religion on post liberal theology and politics, how they how they've worked together and a mutually reinforce each other. And, and I want to do a book more on that kind of really fleshing that out, but also framing what a post post liberalism looks like. What is a Christianity and a politics beyond post liberalism? What that what might that what that might what that might look like and mean for us? That's my bigger project that I hope to work on. I think that's what we need right now since currently post liberalism is kind of winning the day right now in terms of who's in control. And I think we need a vision for something beyond that.

Dr. B.: Wow. So I mean, the thing I'll be looking forward to if you get to it, I mean, when you talk about polydoxy, the only question I had in listening to you speak last fall was what are the limits to that? Because it's it doesn't think you know, you can't just have a free-for-all there has to be some sort of structure and I maybe sort of hinted at that in the book, but like I said, that needs to be more fully fleshed out in a maybe a longer work.

David: Yes.

Dr. B.: But it but I mean, the ones I've talked about mean, John Thatamanil, Catherine Keller, and so on and so forth. They I don't know if they really talk a lot about that in the context of American culture or politics really. And so that's what is the necessary part of the thing that that's missing, if you will, but…

David: Yeah, and I use polydoxy in a different way than they do. Okay. And that's a bit, you know, that's something I try to explain in the conclusion of my book. But, you know, I can only do so much in those few pages. But you know, they're using polydoxy specifically in kind of a theological sense. And I'm using it in a very strictly religious sense. That is, it's not a theological idea. But it's rather a structure, social structure for thinking about religious community, as such. And so I'm I get the term from a Jewish philosopher of religion, Alvin Reines, who more or less coined the term as I am using it, but it's not the same word that Keller, Thatamanil and all others are using.

Dr. B.: Okay. All right. Yeah. That's interesting. Well, we look forward to your future work and we'll keep tabs and maybe at some point we'll have you back. So thanks so much for being here.

David: Great. Yeah, thanks so much for having me.

Dr. B.: All right.

So, what did you think about our convo? Leave a comment below and let me know what you think. Until next time, stay curious. If you enjoyed this, support the channel in the link below. Give me a Super Thanks. Also, please like and share this video and subscribe to this channel. This is TenOnReligion.

2024, David Congdon, Who Is A True Christian: Contesting Religious Identity in American Culture.