A Good Word for Kumbaya with Anthony Robinson | Episode 255

On this episode of Church in Maine, a pastor opines that maybe we need God to come by here after all. That's coming up. Hello, and welcome to Church in Maine, a podcast for people interested in the intersection of faith, politics, and culture. I'm Dennis Sanders, your host. Vice President J.D. Vance recently said, and I believe this took place at the memorial service for Charlie Kirk, that in the aftermath of Kirk's assassination, that this was no Kumbaya moment. In the ears of pastor and theologian Anthony Robinson, the vice president's words sounded rather cynical. Robinson noted in his September post on Substack that the word Kumbaya is derived from the African-American Gullah culture, which is off the coast of South Carolina, and it means, come by here, that then reminded him of the old campfire song, Someone's Praying Lord, Kumbaya. Thinking about our current moment, Robinson added, quote, I'd say we sure as hell do need God, holy power, divine love, to come by here and do it right this very moment, unquote. I wanted to have Robinson back on the podcast to talk about the article, as well as some of the other articles that he's written on his great sub stack, What's Tony Thinking, in the wake of the assassination of Charlie Kirk. But before we get into the conversation, a little bit more about the good reverend. Tony is a writer, speaker, teacher, and ordained minister in the United Church of Christ. He served as senior minister of Seattle's Plymouth Congregational Church for 14 years, and he currently divides his time between Seattle and a cabin in Wallowa County in Northeastern Oregon. So, let's get to this great conversation that I had with Anthony Robinson. It's good to have you back on the podcast, Tony. For people who don't know you, I thought just to kind of start with a quick introduction of who you are. Okay. So I'm, let's see, what am I? Who am I? I'm an ordained United Church of Christ minister who served four churches over about 30 years and then spent a number of years, really up until now, kind of... Freelancing um under the rubric of a couple rubrics one is uh i guess what uh you know a, consulting thing and uh i've taught at a number of schools uh spent a year as an adjunct faculty or, visiting faculty i guess at university of toronto taught at vancouver i've had a lot of I've done a lot of work in Canada, although I've never served a church there. But as a friend of mine says, the Canadians seem to love you. And actually, I just finished a big project for the United Church of Canada that culminated in an application for one of Lily's large grants, $10 million grants. And I write a lot. I've written many books. I haven't written too many books lately. People ask me if I'm going to write another book, and I don't know. I haven't had a clear bead on something I'd like to write about. But I do enjoy writing the blog and appreciate readers like you, Dennis. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Well, I wanted to kind of focus. You wrote something on your blog that actually also shows up on the Mockingbird website titled A Good Word for Kumbaya. And you kind of wrote something, I guess, that was basically kind of tying that with, another kind of phrase that has received a lot of scorn as of late, thoughts and prayers. and um, I guess it was something that Vice President J.D. Vance said that mocked the phrase kumbaya. And I kind of wanted to talk a little bit about that. What was it that he was saying that was kind of mocking? And then why kind of bring up what is the importance of that phrase? Because I think we have used it a lot in a way that is mocking. But it does have some significance to it. Yeah, yeah. Well, as I said in that piece, I grew up singing that, among other things, around camp hires and church youth groups, and it was meaningful. And so I have a soft place in my heart for it. But Vance's speech, which I think was, I'm not sure when it took place. I think it was after the assassination of Kirk, but before the memorial service. And it was a very fiery speech. He was on Kirk's podcast, but it had wide and ride distribution. And he was mostly you know saying I'd love for our nation to be unified but this is not the time for it and we can't be unified with these. Evil leftists and radicals and this is not a kumbaya moment and and he Um, He was promoting what has become the administration's line that this terrible assassination was an expression of what they call the radical left, and that needs to be exterminated or something like that. But so I thought it was certainly impassioned. It was probably one of the better speeches I've heard him give. Oh, I haven't heard many. But it was, I think, over the top. But scorn for Kumbaya has been nonpartisan. We seem to be kind of addicted to conflict. And social media, you know, doesn't help. The only one that I'm on is Facebook and I don't use it or look at it much, but the kind of the algorithmic cueing of outrage and anger seems to be not just an element of that whole world, but really very basic to it. And so I think it's become a lot easier in our culture these days to feel more, more righteous with anger than we do with—and what kumbaya means, obviously, is nothing very sophisticated, but it's come by here. And as I noted also referencing Eric Bibb's wonderful recording of needed time, now is the needed time for prayer. We surely do need God's presence, and crying out for God's mercy and for God's forgiveness and for God's wisdom and for God's direction seems to me urgent, not something to be scorned. And Kumbaya, I guess, is not seen so much as a call for God's presence as it is, let's just all think nice thoughts, which isn't really what it means. So I just, and the thoughts and prayers, Peggy Noonan, who writes a regular column in the Wall Street Journal, had said some things about that. Several weeks ago that I thought were apt. It, again, becomes easy to scorn such a phrase, and I understand that people use it superficially and even probably as a political sop or something like that. But, again, I think that many people, when they say that, That's the best they can do, and there's nothing wrong with it to hold people in your thoughts and prayers, assuming it's sincere. So I just was kind of walking the other side of the street. Yeah. Yeah. Why do you think that there—I mean, because I think with both of the responses to either Kumbaya or Thoughts and Prayers, there seems to be a lot of cynicism to both of those phrases, those responses. I mean, you know, what is it—what's behind that cynicism? Well, I think certainly our trust has been betrayed and diminished over a long period of time. I mean, I'm old enough to remember Nixon and all that stuff and Vietnam. And so I think there's been an erosion of trust that is not just people, you know. Copping out or something. But at the same time, I think there has been a legitimation, as I was saying, of being kind of in the anger and attack mode. And, you know, I get that. I can get angry, and anger is not a sin, but it coupled with, as Arthur Brooks recently coupled with contempt, it becomes quite sinful. And I think it is coupled with contempt a lot. It's kind of a mystery to me. I mean, in some ways, I mean, I get the thing about how, uh, uh, globalism and shifts in the economy and technology and everything have, have left a lot of people out. Okay. I get that. But, but at the same time, it, we're hardly a country, uh, that is, um. I mean, we're pretty darn affluent and well-off and well-protected. And so it's a little bit of a mystery to me that we're so pissed off. But I think you can appear people may be afraid to deviate from that mode as such that they'll get hurt. But I do think it's—I wrote today about Ephesians' passage on the whole armor of God and spiritual warfare. And I do think that we're living in a kind of nihilistic, cynical time. And again, I think there are some reasons, maybe excuses for that. But there's just an awful lot of feeding that, both systemic things like technology and leaders on both sides of the spectrum, I think. And we're more isolated, I think, generally speaking, than we were so much of the world. And, you know, I'm grateful to be on the podcast and grateful to have my place to write there on Substack. But so much of the world comes to us through a screen rather than – and I think –. Interaction with people might be both reassuring and restraining in a way that the screen doesn't seem to be for a lot of folks. So, yeah. Yeah, I think sometimes it's easier to tear down a person if you never have to actually interact with a person that's flesh and blood. If they're just in a screen, you can just kind of, dismiss them whereas if you actually have to see them you can't really dismiss them they're they're an actual person with an actual feelings and actual likes and all of that yeah i think that's a great point i before the writing i do now i i wrote when i was still serving a church a regular column in one of seattle's daily papers and i'd have some you know you'd always I get quite a bit of response, usually directly to me. I always publish my email address. And I had some people that would, they were just as regular as, you know, I mean, and they were always negative. And I had a kind of a stock line, which was, I borrowed from William Dean Howells, which was, you may be right. And we leave it at that. But a couple of times, you know, just week after week, month after month, the kind of the vitriol, I said, Hey, how'd you like to get together for coffee? Well, that was the end of that. No interest in that. Why would I want to do that? So they didn't, yeah. I think I was kind of operating on your theory of actual human contact, and there was not any pickup on that from the several I tried it with. Yeah. Yeah. I think one of the things that I was reading from or picking up from some of the articles you were talking about is, and there was another article that was also interesting, is about the word fascism. Oh, yeah. How you have not used that word. And that word has been used a lot. I think if there is a context for word of the year, that might be in the running. And you've had a kind of good argument why that might not be. And you lifted up, I think, a podcast, one that I listened to, between Ezra Klein and Ross Delfoot. And I thought that one was very illuminating and whereas Recline kind of really I think was trying to build up, I think why people we need to really expand, Why I think more on the left side need to talk more to people, wider, expand the reach of who to talk to, which I think he got a lot of flack for that. And I think you tried to talk about the fact that that's really hard work about expanding, about talking to people, that it's a lot easier to just kind of say a word than it is to actually just talk to people, to actually reach out. And I think that that might be related to what we've just been talking about is this kind of getting beyond the screens to actually having coffee, to actually having conversations with someone that you might disagree with to have fellowship in some way. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's, in some ways, this setting where I am now, which, as I mentioned, is an old family cabin in northeastern Oregon, Wallowa County, is a good place for that. I find it easier to cross the lines and connect with people whose politics may be different than mine and whose faith may be different than mine than I do in a place like Seattle, which is so heavily blue. And, I mean, where there is really no Republican Party at all. Uh, and, uh, Democrats have run things for a long time and that's a problem too. Um, but, um, I guess the, but the point I heard Klein making in that one was, um, uh, You know, you have to be asking yourself how you're going to win elections, not just launching verbal fusilades at the opposition. And I had been to a county Democratic Labor Day picnic before that. I didn't mention that in that piece. But it seemed to me we were kind of perseverating on Trump and his attendance, which I understand. But you've got to have something to offer as an alternative. As a message, you've got to have candidates that are attractive, that are not just wanting to mouth off on MSNBC. You've got to have, um, you, you've got to look at your message and, and, um, be true to yourself, but also, uh, not be such a purist that you can't compromise on issues that are compromisable. Who was it, Count von Zinzendorf, the Moravian, has said in Essentials Unity and in Non-Essentials or charity or something like that. We seem to have a very big basket for essentials these days, you know, and too many things that I think are complex, and to which solutions can be somewhat nuanced. It's an either or. So I invoked Max Weber who said, one of the few quotes I remember, politics is the slow boring of hard boards. And I think that, you know, I have friends, I have readers who have said, this is fascism, why aren't you calling it out? Well, for one thing, I don't think the other side is going to say, oh, we didn't understand that we were being fascistic. Gee, we will now change. No, we're in very rigid camps. And I think the only way you make progress is kind of building relationships. And... And I think oftentimes relationships are built, you know, working on issues locally. I mean, when we nationalize our local politics, they become as dreadful as, you know, as gridlocked as national politics are. But so I just, I don't see any percentage strategically in shouting fascist. And, you know, there are credible scholars who have looked at the thing and looked at no fascism and have written about that. Okay, that's fine. That's informative. But that's not my, they don't need me to do that. I would just join Ezra Klein and say, hey, you know, Democrats, job one right now is getting good, solid, strong, thoughtful, attractive candidates to run for the House in 2026. And I'm not a, it's not that I'm a Democratic partisan. I think we need two parties, two viable parties. And right now, one of those parties, well, they're both in trouble, but for different reasons. So, yeah. Think about the church itself. Why do you think that the church is handling itself right now? And let's actually look at this from the—let's look at it from right now at the mainline church. We'll look at the evangelical church, but since we're both from mainline denominations, how do you think the mainline church is handling this moment that we're in right now? Um, well, my, I'm not, I'm not serving a church. I go to church. I go to one church here in Oregon, and I go to a different church in Seattle. So that's kind of my, my sample, which is very obviously very limited. Then I know people who are pastors and church leaders, and then I have my own denomination's statements and whatnot. And I guess my general sense for a long time is that religion has become too politicized, too identified with partisan politics on both sides. And that we've really confused the proper role of religion and the proper role of politics. We've made politics, in many cases, a kind of an ultimate life-or-death struggle, which I suppose it is at some times. It was in the Civil War, but it generally speaking, that's a failure of politics, not a success. And I don't go to church—, And personally, to be, you know, to have the New York Times rehashed for me or something like that, I go to hear the gospel. And so one of the churches we go to begins every week with kind of the barbed wire around the candle and talking about some injustice of the week. And every injustice I've heard about at that church has either been on something that Israel did or something that Trump administration did. And I get that people are agonized and disturbed and need a place to process all that. But I guess I would try to do that were I a pastor at this point. Sometimes you just have to say something, but not very often. And sometimes it can be dealt with in prayer time. But other times it's more suitable, I think, in small groups and adult education settings, if you're going to get into those things and really try to. You know, to make it safe for people who don't agree with each other to have their say or to have a say. And, you know, I just, I always thought churches could learn a lot from the practice in recovery groups of no crosstalk. You know, you kind of share your perspective, your struggle, your hope. And somebody else doesn't get to say, oh, no, I disagree with that. You just say, thank you, and move on. And I think that, you know, so we need more of that in our communities. Yeah. Okay, yeah. Yeah, I kind of would agree that I think, especially mainline churches, have become a little bit too pillow-sized, and it hasn't been helpful to foster dialogue or, in some ways, reconciliation, because not everyone agrees. Right. And not everyone can—it hasn't always been a way of bringing people together at this time, and I feel like the church really needs to be a place to bring people together, not necessarily to foster places apart. And, you know, I mean, I hear a lot sometimes, well, churches need to be places of resistance and—, I get that to a point, but I also feel like we need to be something more than that. Yeah. And our resistance, you know, as Bart said in the Barman Declaration, needs to be anchored in Jesus Christ. Exactly. And his word and his living word, not in, you know, not in other sources. But I'd had a thought there when you were but I wasn't. It's yeah it's the church I wrote a piece called Blue Church Red Church and I hate those terms but that's pretty much, the reality there are exceptions Mockingbird is interesting they, They don't want to be a blue church or a red church, and they don't want to really spend most of their energy or any of their energy talking about politics. And I think it's very easy for people in my part of the church world, a quite liberal progressive denomination, to indict that as cowardice, that you're not addressing the really important stuff. But I think just, you know, kind of if you're talking, if you're preaching to the choir and just I don't think you're making any progress and you're likely as not speaking the one word that people really desperately need to hear, the word of God's grace, which all of us need to hear. So I don't go to church to get. Advice. I go to hear news, the good news. Yeah. Yeah. Do you think that that's, I mean, we usually accuse or talk about what's happening, especially within American evangelicalism, that it's politicized. And I think that charge is legitimate, but that's, what's happening there is kind of a mirror of what's happening. In mainline churches? Yeah, it's a mistake to think that either one of those sectors has a corner on that activity, both of them. And in both, there are people who deviate from that. I mean, Christianity Today as a magazine, I think, has acquitted itself well in this period. It's Christian. It's gospel. It addresses political issues and addresses—but it hasn't just made itself a mouth organ for the Republican Party. And on the other side, I would, you know, mockingbird is more of a mainline expression, I would think. It's certainly not as prominent as Christianity today, but I think a lot of us find nurture there because, you know, we don't…. Want to devote all our time to politics, and we don't think it's the only or the most important thing going. It is important, but it's not the only important thing. So, yeah, I think, you know, the church is— And I would differentiate between partisan politics and kind of having political and public awareness. I mean, I think it's good, as the Catholics say, to work at the formation of conscience around important issues like racism or housing or something like that. But that's different than embracing and being a mouth organ for one political party, which is partisan politics, or for candidates, which I guess we're going to see a lot more of now that the IRS has ruled. It's not a, yeah, taking that off the table. But it wouldn't, I don't know. Yeah, I do think, you know, I said really, my take after the 2016 election was that our religion has gotten too politicized and our politics have gotten too religious. In the sense of being a tool for political agendas. I mean, it's pretty clear that Trump is not a Christian by any sense of the imagination, but he appeals, has appealed to a lot of people. And by using that, using it, using Christian faith and symbology. Yep. So how do we kind of, I mean, how do we get out of that or how do we move forward? And I guess kind of running, I guess maybe moving back to our beginning is how do we get to a... Kumbaya moment. I'm always surprised after another shooting, especially the school shootings, tear my heart out, that we don't fall to our knees. I mean, it's just, you know, kind of, hey, we need help. And maybe that can only be done in in church or in in religious settings i don't know maybe politicians are incapable of that but um but i i i guess i i don't know i the answer is i don't know but i. I think this, for a lot of us, the Trump thing, I think, was seen as kind of, at least the first go-around was seen as an aberration and we'd get over it. And now I think we understand that something is there, and it needs to be reckoned with in more than just a way of deploring it. And we need to think, you know, about what's going on and what the message is. And I think, you know, it's not limited to the U.S. This kind of right-wing populism is worldwide. And there's left-wing populism, too. It's not as potent right now. So why is that? Why is it? And again, I think it goes back at least some to the erosion of community and the failure of institutions to be reliable and trustworthy and like that. So I kind of... I don't know the answer. Go ahead. I think it's useful to try to keep our times in perspective, like because good writing about, you know, really violence, political violence is not a new thing or a stranger to American political life. You could say it's been far worse at other times, but so I think, you know, and this is, I don't know if this is right. This sounds a little too apathetic, but this too shall pass. Uh it i i'm not apathetic but i also don't think this is the end of the world. Um i think it's apathetic i think, maybe simply as a younger person i think there's a lot of this kind of, it is the end of the world because we think this is something like this has never happened before but it has happened before it's happened many times before in our history and so this isn't new and i mean people have talked about a lot of the political violence of the 60s and 70s and so um. This is a rough period, and things like this do happen, and they do, at some point, end. But I think while you're in it, people think it's the worst thing. And that's not to make light of it. It's not great. It's not good. but history shows us that this has happened before and it'll happen again and unfortunately that's kind of the way of the world yeah yeah yeah it's um so i think yeah perspective is important and i think to me one of the one of the gifts of uh christian faith and christian worship is always when it's you know when it's authentic is is it restores our perspective on things on ourselves on on those that we're at odds with on things that we're suffering on things that are of concern um it gives us another uh place to stand and um so uh. Yeah, I mean, I think at the end of the day, what the faith reminds us is that we are not all that. We are imperfect, and that this reminds us of the grace of God and the goodness of God. Yeah, yeah. Right, yeah. I mean, if we're the only ones in charge here, we're in deep shit. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's— And I think to some extent, liberalism, and I would count myself in that camp, political and theological liberal, is a little bit, is getting a comeuppance to our over-reliance on human capacity. And our over-optimism about progress and et cetera. I mean, we seem to be pretty good in continuing to give evidence of how Chesterston called the original sin the only empirically verifiable doctrine of Christian faith. And there's a lot of empirical evidence that we're all a mess. Yep. Yep. Well, thank you so much for this time. I think this has been helpful in kind of talking about this and really kind of sharing kind of the mess we're in. but I think also. That how we can and how we will kind of get out of this because, you know, as we said, how this won't last forever. And I think your thing about theological liberalism, I think you're right, that there has been a lot of this belief and everything will get better, always get better, and it doesn't always work that way. Right. And it's also been, I think we've been bedeviled by by kind of a deistic notion of God, that God is not a living presence. I heard somebody say the other day that, You know, in Scripture, we talk a lot about God as a loving God, and I believe that, but maybe we ought to talk more about God as a living God. Mm-hmm. Yep. And it's because we tend to, at least tradition I was raised in, it seemed as if to me, and maybe I'm just not too quick on the uptake, but that we thought that God had put us in charge and kind of gone to Florida and retired or something like that. And that's bad theology, and it's with consequences that we easily get overwhelmed if we think it's all up to us. Well, if he did, we're not doing such a good job. He's like, oh, maybe I need to come back. Yeah, right. Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah. Come out of retirement. Yeah yeah right well it's great to talk with you dennis and uh wish you all the best glad for what you're doing in the podcast i have on my list to listen to the one you did with aaron zimmerman there uh thank you all right we'll take care hope to have you back all right. If you have thoughts on the episode, feel free to leave a note. You can do that by sending an email to churchinmain, all one word, at substack.com. I will include links to Tony's Substack, as well as to the article that kind of led everything off. I think it's a provocative article. I think it's a good article. And there are several other great articles in his Substack. To me, it's a go-to Substack that I enjoy reading, so I hope that you will read it as well. If you want to learn more about this podcast, listen to past episodes, or donate, please go to churchinmain.org. You can also visit churchinmain.substack.com to read related articles, subscribe to the podcast on your favorite podcast app to leave a rating or review. Please consider doing that. That can help others find this podcast. If you want to make a donation to help defray costs in making sure that we can keep producing great content, there is a link in the show notes. You can also use a link in the show notes if you want to get the new episodes in your email inbox. Thanks. That is it for this episode of Church in Maine. I'm Dennis Sanders, your host. Thank you so much for listening. Take care, everyone. Godspeed. And I will see you very soon.