46: Global Anglican Theology with Michael Battle

Hosts: Brandon Nappi and Hannah Black

Guest: Michael Battle

Production: Goodchild Media

Music: Wayfaring Stranger, Theodicy Jazz Collective

Art: Ella Landino

Instagram: @theleadersway.podcast

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You can support our work at https://tinyurl.com/support-transforming-leaders

Brandon: Hello, Hannah. 

Hannah:  Hello, Brandon. How are you? 

 B:           I am great. Do you sometimes just have to pinch yourself?

Like, we get to do this for a living. Talk about theology and spirituality and leadership. 

H:           Actually, yeah. It’s kind of insane that this is part of our day job. I think most podcasters, it’s a passion project. It’s happening in their garage, and I do try to bring that energy. Like, I’m not …  I don’t want this to be dusty, crusty, musty, and fusty. But also it’s amazing. This is part of it.

B:            Yes. The full garage energy, although I am in the attic. 

H:           Is that like a man cave, but for bats instead of whales? 

B:            Yeah, It’s like a man cloud, I think, is really what I prefer to think. It’s closer to heaven.

It’s also closer to my cat’s support area, like food, water, litter box. 

H:           Paintings of themselves. 

B:            Paintings. Paintings. Yes. Along with the book …  the book on … tyranny that none of us realized we’d ever need. 

H:           Oh. We’ll just put a pin in that. Big pin.

B:            And we could talk about that.  Big pin.

H:           Big pin. Hefty pin. Well, you just got back from Georgia, and I’m about to head to Texas all for work travels. But how was Georgia? I haven’t spent very much time at all in Georgia ever. So what was there, peaches? 

B:            So I think I think my big realization was, I’d never left the airport in Atlanta ever. Yeah. It was stunning. So it was lovely and beautiful and the people were fantastic and the weather was gorgeous. It was 65 and sunny as we met for this wonderful new guild that is the Association for Lifelong Learning for Ministry or ALAM as we call it. It was a guild created, I guess, about fifty years ago by the World Council of Churches as they recognize that folks in ministry need lifelong learning that we … you know, if we are to be effective in ministry, we need to be learning all the time. And it was a really sweet group of folks. This is the kind of the leadership team of this guild, which has kinda gotten quiet over the last few years, but putting together a strategic plan and over three days, we just reflected on what are the kinds of challenges that spiritual leaders are facing, you know, where does the growth need to happen in our lives, how do we adapt to conditions that are always adapting? What are the kind of support systems that we need within churches, denominations, universities, seminaries, so that there’s a more integrated learning system from the degree side of things to the ministerial side of things so that we could all be kind of rowing in the same direction whether we’re seminary professors or directors of lifelong learning. Just fascinating conversation, amazing people, the sweetest souls, such giving, thoughtful, brilliant humans. So I’m sure there’ll be more to, to say about the work of ALAM in the coming days. We’ll be planning some learning experiences, some retreats or workshops. So more to come.

H:           That’s fantastic. Fantastic. And I’ve gotta give a little shout out to alumnus Tay Mas who kind of looped us into this world and who also (here’s my favorite Tay fact, and I think it’s, as the British would say, Marmite– you’re gonna love this or hate this.) Tay is the inventor of Kathy: Churchy Answers That Help You, which is an AI chatbot who could teach you things about the Episcopal church as you have questions. I’ve been playing around with the chatbot. It’s actually been a lot of fun. 

B:            Kathy could teach you about Hannah and Brandon. I presume it would be interesting to see what what Kathy knows about us. Definitely–I’ve witnessed Kathy pull from the Berkeley at Yale website, and Kathy tells you her sources. So this is something I appreciate about Kathy. Anything from, like, the mysterious canons to the Episcopal Church glossary to the Berkeley at Yale website. It’s very interesting. 

B:            Do you think Kathy listens to the podcast?

H:           Kathy can read our transcripts on our website. Berkeleydivinity.yale.edu/podcast.

B:            She reads the transcripts. Wow. Okay.

H:           Alright. I gotta … But okay. All this talk about Georgia is giving me the urge to have a map moment. I think this is … we just created a segment. Map moments. So we do have listeners in Georgia. Hello to you, Georgia listeners. 

B:            We love you, Georgia. 

H:           Who do you think is the number one state who tuned in over the last three months in The United States. In The United States. 

B:            I want it to be…  I want it to be Hawaii because … 

H:           What I can tell you is it used to be Connecticut. Oh, okay. Gosh.

B:            Oh, okay. Gosh I don’t know. 

H:           But you are … you’re close with Hawaii. 

B:            Okay, Tennessee. I’m gonna go for Tennessee because I know we have a lot of peeps in Tennessee. 

H:           No. Okay. I’ll give you some hints. Hopefully, they’ll be increasingly easy. Okay. Oranges. 

B:            Oh, these are Florida friends?

H:           Nope. Burritos. 

B:            Oh–our California friends? Oh, you did it.

H:           I was gonna get a lot easier, but you know me too well in all my California stuff. But, yeah, California is number one. New York coming in second place. Connecticut bumped down to third place. Then Virginia, Texas, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, then Florida, then Georgia. 

B:            Well, I can only, explain that from the, from the Hannah fans who love their California 

H:           Well, there does seem to be a little bit of, like, a size of the state factor, a state population factor. And then as far as countries, The US is in the lead, but then we’ve got Canada, The UK, New Zealand, Australia, and Singapore.

B:            Well, this is exciting. 

H:           Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hopefully, this is spurring on everyone’s sense of competition. 

B:            Thank you for listening. There’s, you know, there’s other things you could be listening to. 

H:           That’s true. And welcome to all of our new listeners. I feel like it’s been it’s been a while since we’ve said welcome. 

B:            We have a cool episode. 

H:           We have a very cool episode. I’ve actually been thinking back to this episode. It’s now … this is one of those funny scheduling moments where we recorded this a while ago. And I’ve had this one line from the episode echoing through my brain, which is that Michael Battle said the Episcopal church has gone from being the church of the establishment to being the church of advocacy. And I think that’s really interesting, and I’ve been teaching through our Anglican Way I class this semester, and a lot of it—the King Henry stuff and the colonialization stuff; there’s a kind of sick sense in the room of like, “Oh goodness. Like, this is our family history. Why are we here?” Is sort of what’s at the top of people’s minds and hearts sometimes.

               And, I’m kind of just watching, like– a little pet project I have while I’m teaching is watching the story unfold and trying to detect when does that switch happen from the church of establishment to the church of advocacy and how? And was that always there in some way, or there’s some of the historical circumstances? Do they make it possible for that to unfold in that way? So that, I think, is really interesting. 

B:            I like it. I’m here for it. Agitation and advocacy. 

H:           Yes. Well, we’re excited…

B:            Tagline. Education for agitation. 

H:           Woah. Woah. That could be misconstrued so easily. Like, sign up, and we’ll annoy you.

               Well, we’re excited to have the Very Reverend Dr. Michael Battle back to Berkeley. He was at YDS for his STM. He was recently back to give a lecture a couple convocations ago, and now he’s back in his new way on the podcast. Michael Battle is the Extraordinary Professor at the Desmond Tutu Center for Religion and Social Justice at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa. He’s Theologian in Community at Trinity Church Boston, and he used to teach at General Theological Seminary in New York, where he was the Herbert Thompson professor of church and society and the director of the Desmond Tutu Center.

               He was ordained in 1993 by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. He’s published nine books. This may, in fact, be the tenth. And he was given one of the highest Anglican church distinctions as Sixth Preacher by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. So there’s a lot more that we could say about him, but hopefully that gives listeners kind of a flavor for the caliber of person who’s joining us today to talk about this new series about theology from a global Anglican perspective. And this first installment focuses on faith. 

B:            Hi. I’m Brandon Nappi. 

H:           Hi. I’m Hannah Black, and we’re your hosts on the Leader’s Way podcast.

B:            A Yale podcast, empowering leaders, cultivating spirituality, and exploring theology. 

H:           This podcast is brought to you by Berkeley Divinity School, the Episcopal Seminary at Yale. 

               Hello, and welcome back to Berkeley and welcome to the Leaders Way podcast. I would like to, as a way of kind of diving into this book, this first in a series, ask you about how this new series, “Conversations in Global Anglican Theology,” highlights the diversity of the Anglican communion. I was just reading and, kind of keeping track of the numbers. And the Anglican communion, for listeners who don’t know, is the third largest Christian communion with more than 85,000,000 members in over 165 different countries. So it’s easy to think of it as starting in Britain and kind of having those kinds of roots. And I think it’s easy to lose track of this glorious diversity. So I’m wondering if you can kind of turn our attention there. 

Rev. Michael: Yeah. Thanks, Hannah. I think, you know, the main reason for writing this book is is not really to to do any cultural bashing or to have a zero sum outcome in a discussion, but it’s really to highlight, I think, neglected voices. And I have a theory for the reason why those voices are neglected. So thanks first for setting the context for the Anglican Communion. 85,000,000 members, focused usually on the tradition of a three-legged stool: scripture, tradition, reason. Ways in which that three legged three-legged stool was, amplified by moving it to four features because of the Chicago Lambeth quadrilateral. So it expands to scripture, creed, sacrament, and episcopate. 

               And then as we have learned, the troubles, as they would say in Northern Ireland, the troubles of the Anglican communion are not new. You know, after all, we started with a divorce, and the troubles have moved and morphed into zero-sum outcomes or struggles for winners and losers among, whether you’re Anglo Catholic or evangelical, liberal, or conservative, high church, low church. So those struggles also have exacerbated some of these troubles around what it means to be Anglican as we’re trying to figure that out. 

               And then we’ve had what I think is the core of this book series. You know, “Anglican” is a term that’s also a cultural term. It’s a term that thinks of a linguistic group, and linguistic groups also carry with them cultural aspects. You know–where to place your fork, what clothes to wear, who has the hierarchy of authority, who gets to make the rules, and so on. So within Anglicanism, there is a cultural sensibility to this as well.

               So, you know, the problem has been who, in the midst of the big bang of Anglicanism, who gets to fit in? And of late, there’s been a major, I think, major shift from being a church of the establishment, if you’re an Anglican, to being a church of advocacy. This role is now being writ large around the globe. But to me, the Anglican communion is in the midst of that metamorphosis of moving from the church of the establishment to the church of advocacy. 

               And I think this series, this book series, which has started with the book on faith, has tried to figure out ways in which we can understand ourselves as Anglican, not just in terms of the metrics of English theologians or Anglican culture, but in a theological boundary. And I’ve made that boundary like a quadrilateral as well, but I’ve tried to open it up so that we can imagine much more of who we are than what we have. 

               So the four sort of distinctions in the series are faith, culture, activism, and mysticism. And so we just finished the first book on faith. 

H:           I have so many follow-up questions already. Before we really move on, could I ask you to kind of camp out on the “church of the establishment” and the “church of advocacy” and expand on what both of those things mean?

M:           Sure. So as you know, the Anglican church spread around the world based on what we understand as colonialism. And as the Anglican church spread around the world where the sun never set on that British empire, those in power over those colonies created a a milieu in which if you wanted to be like a white-collar worker or someone who was, having a job that was a little more “civilized,” you had to get into the socialization process of that. So many of the indigenous people who were being colonized would join the Anglican church so they can work in a bank or, you know, volunteer at a school, or to whatever extent the British would give any kind of control or reciprocity, the gatekeeper, of course, was still that Anglican culture.

               So the “church of the establishment” is that way of seeing this gatekeeping sensibility, and who could get in, who could move through that gate, and who could not move through. So many people joined the church because, you know, they wanted to be considered as a banker, or they joined the church because they were trying to be a leader. So that’s the establishment side.  

               Now the church of advocacy is to me a new phenomenon, but you could argue that it had seeds all along, especially with, historical figures like John Colenso, a white Anglican bishop who was excommunicated for trying to support the Zulu, trying to befriend the Zulu in South Africa. They called him back to the principal’s office, which was the first Lambeth conference, to excommunicate John Colenso’s work in South Africa. So you could argue that the church of advocacy was also present within Anglicanism. But for the most part, the Anglican church was seen as a church of the establishment. 

               And so of late, at least in North America, the Anglican church has been the canary in the mine of many of our social issues. The Anglican church has really been a champion for the LGBTQ community. It’s been a champion in many ways for those some of the movements that sort of fizzled out, so that–such as the Occupy Movement. Remember that? Most people don’t even remember that anymore. It’s been really a good voice, not the dominant voice, but a good voice, in terms of how we can be responsible for climate change. And of late, through some of the leadership in the Anglican Communion, we’ve been trying to be a voice among, being an advocate for economic reforms as well. So there is a … there’s been a shift for those in the Anglican church, to try to be voices for those who have not been represented in spheres of power.

B:            And when you talk about zero-sum, can you say a little bit more? I mean, I’m thinking, things always get more interesting when there are multiple winners. And yet maybe for those listeners who are maybe not tracking this legacy of colonization so closely, what sort of opens up? What are the possibilities that begin to emerge that make that make us all sort of … all the richer? 

M:           Yeah. Well, I mean, I think, for sort of climate change, for example, if you think about this, or COVID, this–probably the pandemic is a good example. More and more, we’re seeing that no longer can we be successful in isolation, or that we can be the winners, as long as there are losers. More and more, we’re seeing how we are inextricably linked together. And doing something the same way expecting a different outcome has been the way of war and violence and economic oppression, and that’s just not sustainable. So work that’s currently going on, in terms of trying to create sustainability not just for the few but for everyone, to me is one of the powers of healthy leadership today.

               You know, no one is entertained by what I’m saying. You know, we’re more entertained by zero-sum outcomes, you know, heroes and villains and so on. But even in the the world of the arts, we’re becoming a lot more complicated. We’re now having antiheroes, which we’re starting to understand really, which is, you know, which point of view are we hearing in the story? And usually, in points of view of whoever the hero in the story is means that we haven’t really been telling the villain side of the story. And now we’re doing more with anti-villains, such as, some of the mythology today that comes out of comic books. One of the major villains is the Joker. And now we’re seeing the Joker singing in a musical and having a kind of benign aspect to understanding why he is who he is.

               So the zero-sum outcomes are now being challenged, becoming much more conscious of what’s going on. And sadly, with the tragedy of the UnitedHealthcare CEO being killed, we are getting into really, really troubling waters in terms of, you know, who are the heroes and, you know, who are the villains. 

H:           Gosh. I so … I’m kind of reminded of part of the way Rowan Williams frames this volume in naming how complicated and entangled in colonialism our Anglican theology is. And I’m wondering if there are ways in this volume that you saw the idea of faith, either in a new way or in what might be a new way to our listeners, to your readers, because of this lens of looking at Anglican theology of faith from a global perspective?

M:           Yeah. You know, we have … in the book, we have the context of South Korea, which is, you know, another hot issue these days. We have … we have Bishop Rose, who I’m sure they’re bantering her name back and forth for who’s gonna be the next archbishop of Canterbury. We have South African young feminist theologians in the book, and we have the grandson of the architect of apartheid in the book, Wilhelm Verut. And so when we’re talking about faith, to me, what’s beautiful about this is, you know, most of these people really don’t belong. They’re not the archetype of most people’s imagination of an Anglican. And they also realize that, you know, in not originally belonging or not having the existential purchase on that identity, they require faith. They require faith that is beyond the zero-sum outcome, because otherwise they’re gonna be seen as sellouts or trying to join the church so that they could be a banker or whatever that the world would judge them as. They, in each of their chapters, but mostly just by virtue of who they are, they are articulating a way of going beyond the current world views in which there are winners and losers.

               And to me, that’s what faith is. It’s being able to see something that we’re not really naturally seeing, and also by having that faith, behavior follows with it. So that’s why I’m so proud of those who wrote those chapters in this first book. 

B:            So occasionally I teach preaching at Yale Divinity School, and it’s just a joy to be in the Introduction to Preaching class. And, something that I ask all of all of my preachers, young preachers after they preach their first homily is, “What did you want to happen in your listeners’ minds, in their hearts and in their bodies? What did you want them to think? What did you– how did you want them to pray differently in their hearts? And then ultimately, what did you want them to do?” And I wonder if that question might also be, you know, helpful to editors or, you know, authors of books. You know, what were your hopes, in terms of releasing this important work out into the world, that would change in in people’s minds, hearts, and their actions?

M:           Yeah. Thanks, Brandon. You know, my goal as the editor was to talk about some of the things we’ve already talked about, to use different language, but also to guard against theological tropes and stereotypes that often spawn from leisure societies like our western world, to really question what do we mean by international community. For example, you know, US citizens have the lowest proportionate rate of having a passport. And yet we are, you know, pontificating about, you know, being an international power when most of us think or at least the way we behave as US citizens is that the world is the US.

               And I think–another thing I was hoping as the editor, is to help us really imagine a global village without it being a children’s story. You know, we’re really trying to practice that because whether we like it or not, technology is making us like a village. And then considering the current civil wars in the Anglican Communion over sexual identity, over race, over culture, over who is the dominant culture, I was hoping to try to move beyond those kinds of tropes of civil wars, Anglo-Catholic, evangelical. And I was hoping that … to try to have more of a conversation around globalization, which is a bad word for many people. 

               But in practices, that’s who we’re gonna have to be. We’re gonna have to learn how to be a global community and not wait for Godzilla or earthquakes or whatever to become a global village, not wait for tragedies.   And I think one of the last goals was to, as the editor, bring these voices together that have been siloed in echo chambers. Part of the strategies around colonialization was a divide-and-conquer strategy to keep the difference, that they are conquering, to keep those differences at each other’s throats, and not to try to let those differences coalesce to form a beautiful diversity. 

               So one of the goals is to bring diverse voices together. I’m hoping that these books will also lead to symposia, bringing these authors together and having conversations in churches and seminaries, and just so that it can become live conversations. 

H:           If you’re enjoying the Leaders Way podcast, you might like to join us in person as a Leaders Way fellow. The Leaders Way Yale certificate program combines the best of seminary, retreat, and pilgrimage. Fellows meet in person at Yale for a week in June, then continue their learning in mentor groups online. To learn more, visit our website.

B:            You might also like to join us for one of our upcoming online courses or workshops. Our learning space is hopeful, courageous, and imaginative. This year’s offerings include courses and workshops on prayer, preaching, conflict management, and more. Clergy and lay leaders from every country, denomination, and seminary background are warmly welcome to join us for all of our programs. Now back to the show.

B:            A question occurred to me, and it’s a question kind of from the heart of the Leaders Way program, our wonderful residential program, in which we bring church leaders to Yale from around the world, from around the communion. And it’s quite challenging to bring to bring folks together from different cultures and contexts with often huge disparities of resource and what one maybe American rector considers meager resources is actually plentiful resources in a in a different context. And I wonder; you’re a person who’s done theological education in very diverse contexts. You’re, you know, you teach with you know, students from around the world. And I wonder, you know, do you do you teach differently when you’re in a more head heterogeneous classroom? Or, I mean, just to make this really concrete, can you pass along some wisdom and some encouragement to Hannah and I who will, in a few months, be convening a truly international group of Anglicans together? And you know, what might we be thinking about so that we can create a space that really feels like a village, and not like, we’re all trying to kind of guard our own territories? 

M:           Wonderful. First of all, that’s fantastic that you’re doing that and bringing people from around the world together. I’ve been teaching a course at Canterbury Cathedral each year where we bring seminarians from around Anglican communion together, so I know what you are into.

So what I would share is first, know about the cultural varieties of learning first. What I mean by that is oftentimes in particular cultures, honor cultures, cultures that have the concept of shame and honor, which are crucial to much of the sort of vocabulary of those cultures. To be aware that, unlike in the Western world, unlike being at a prestigious place like Yale, people listen first instead of speaking. And cultures like Yale and cultures like academic cultures, you are actually judged and rewarded based on your ability to articulate your claim on truth, your hermeneutic, your original thoughts, and then listen, if you even do that. But–and then listen, but you’re not just listening, you’re listening to critique. 

               And so in many other cultures, they listen first. And this is what’s gonna be difficult for us in the Western world. Not only do they listen first, but oftentimes they wait for the permission to speak. And so that, you know, that goes against the ways in which we judge success, judge the scholar. And we look at that as weakness in the Western world, of course. So that’s one thing. Be aware of those sort of cultural cues of sort of the social psychology of being together. 

               And then I think the second thing is, caucus. So if there’s a way in which you can allow those diverse communities to be together, and, you know, reflect on Willie Jennings or whatever, and then come back together in the majority group. You see what I mean? You can allow them to caucus, and then let the dominant culture in those in your educating, in your environment of education, let the dominant group be together.

               And in other words, I guess, a fish doesn’t know it’s wet. So if you can, like, show these differences and make them conscious among the students, I would encourage you to do that. And ways in which you can celebrate the cultures, you know, even the western cultures, ways in which we can all celebrate them, and not necessarily be paralyzed by the tragedies of our past.

H:           Yeah. That so beautiful. And that last bit you threw in about the being paralyzed is something that I’ve watched students wrestle with in seminary, as they’re thinking about how to lead churches. 

               What about people who are on the other side of this and who are maybe a rector, a priest, whatever, a layperson, who want to be more in touch with the global Anglican Communion, and maybe they’re not signed up for your course at Canterbury. They’re not signed up for the Leaders Way, although maybe they should be. How can people kind of expand their own horizons and perspectives? 

M:           Yeah. Well, I’ll be a little mercenary here. 

H:           Buy the book!

M:           No. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Buy the book. But I do offer experiences. I lead Tutu, Desmond Tutu travel seminars in January and August. And, you know, the difference between being informed and transformed, to me, both occur in experiences like that. 

               I also think, those who are in localities will always have opportunities to understand what’s beyond them. It’s not by accident that, you know, young people leave certain rural localities when … if they think, for example, they are lacking experiences and exposures. So what I mean by that is, there is this indelible way of knowing through the particularity of a local church or community that there should be more. And yet, we realize that the value of the, you know, the particularity of a local community is in the ability to get to know each other. So I don’t think it’s either or. I think to grow, we have to have that restlessness until we rest in God. And yet, we also know that we need to have the stabilitas in which to do great things. That’s what our social psychologists teach us, that we need the base from which to really do spectacular things.  

               So if there’s there if there are ways for clergy and leaders in local context to just be aware of what the longings are in their in their particular local communities. And in the Episcopal church, in the Episcopal church, the longings are very deep, so deep it’s really about survival. Right? And so that longing to survive, I’m hoping and praying that it can move towards flourishing, not just trying to tolerate others around us because they are there. You know, many folks in our kind of revolution around immigration, they are there. There are people in the most isolated rural areas that are different from us. The question is, are we willing to be transformed and informed by those around us? 

               So hopefully, this book can be some conversations, maybe conversation-starters in a local context, can be adult forms, sort of ways in which you could use that in a local parish, or maybe preach from some of the themes that you’re that you’re seeing. Or use it– use the book in a book club, hopefully.

H:           It sounds to me like part of the key is to not only be curious about other people and deeply full of love about the other people even in your own community, but then also to know yourself enough to know that, especially for those of us that this would feel difficult, your experience isn’t the normative experience or the correct experience or something like that. 

M:           That’s right. 

B:            I’m thinking that, you know, Christmas dinner is coming up soon and, you know, we’ll be with family members we might, you know, not have seen in in quite some time. And, you know, gone are the days when, traditional religious language is recognizable and discernible to folks, and I’m sometimes led to think that even really basic terms like faith might not be readily understood by folks. And, you know, I think about the classical definition of faith by Anselm– faith seeking understanding– is kind of where many of us began in studying theology. But I wonder, you know, when you go back and go to something as basic as faith, a kind of bedrock foundation of everything we’ve built the church on, how do you … how has your understanding of faith changed, you know, over the course of your ministry, your leadership, but also how has it evolved as you’ve edited all these wonderful articles? 

M:           Yeah. Yeah. So going back to what I was saying in terms of the faith of those contributors for those chapters, you know, just scripturally, the definition of faith represents what this book has tried to do. You know, faith understood scripturally is the evidence of things not seen. Right? So just think about the methodology of this book of folks who are usually not seen in Anglicanism and showing the evidence of who they are, as well as the contributions that they are making to the Anglican church. Hopefully, not just the Anglican church but to the world. In some ways I’m putting false distinctions on who people are by calling them Anglican. But, you know, the they are evidence that we all belong together, these people who historically would not be understood as being a part of the Anglican communion.

               Yeah. And I think, for example, you can–Brandon, you can use the word hope also, which in many ways is, not understood. But I would say, Dmitri Rahab, who, you know, the Palestinian theologian who was doing some fantastic work, he defines hope as action, as having a next step. Just think about someone who may be suicidal, and for that person to have hope is an action, is a movement, is a next step towards life as opposed to moving in the continuum that is a negative aspect of taking that person’s life. So in the Palestinian situation, for example, hope is an action. It’s not just, some voyeuristic way of looking into that deeply tragic circumstance around the world, but it’s an action of moving out of being objectified and being taken advantage of. 

H:           I was wondering about your choice of “faith” versus other things. And I’m wondering, how did you come up with faith, culture, activism, and mysticism as the things that you wanted to zero in on for this project? 

M:           Yeah. I mean, I think scripture, tradition, and reason are so European and so much of the Enlightenment ways of describing reality. And I think by looking at faith, it’s getting at what I was trying to say in the methodology of who is Anglican. You know, how can we really show evidence of God, evidence of that which is not easily seen. So that’s the reason that we start out with faith. And then culture, as I was saying, Anglicanism is a culture, whether we like it or not.

And so Pope Gregory, you know, before he sent Saint Augustine of Canterbury, he was, you know, he had this kind of epiphany to go and save these barbarians because he thought that they were angels. You know, these kinda blonde-haired and blue-eyed people who were being sold in slavery. Right? So he sent Augustine of Canterbury to save these kind of like pretty angelic people who were being enslaved. Augustine didn’t wanna go, but he did go. And they had that assumption that they were gonna go save all the barbarians. And once Augustine got there, he realized that these people already were Christians.  So it just shows you that culture has a hubris, but also culture is something that’s a lot more dynamic than what we think of. 

               And then activism, and that’s trying to get at what I think is a shift, a good shift in Anglicanism moving from the establishment to communities of advocacy. And then mysticism, which is one of my favorite topics.

H:           Ours too. 

M:           Because I think, you know, if you if you look at the mystic, the mystic is not trying to lessen scholarship or lessen the rigor of critically knowing. It’s understanding the various ways of knowing. So you can know by unknowing. You can learn by unlearning. And the mystic is a lot more open to–perhaps quantum physics as a better theology today. So the mystics are those who are pushing us beyond what we have set upon as knowing reality. And the very minute we think we know God is the very minute we get into idolatry and a lot of dysfunctional Christianity. 

H:           This is so beautiful and exciting. And, one of those, like, magic class sessions that I had with some students about a year ago at this point, we started talking about scripture, tradition, and reason, and this is an ecumenical classroom with a lot of Episcopal seminarians in it. But there were some Methodists in the room who said, wait, but what about experience? And our Berkeley students immediately went, What? We only get scripture, tradition, and reason? We don’t get experience? That that’s not fair. We want experience!” Yeah. And we still talk about that class session. But, this is really refreshing and generative, I think, as a way of thinking about what we can know and how we can know, I’m energized, especially with mysticism. Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness.

M:           Yes. 

B:            Yeah. I’m thinking of that, you know, that classic line by, by Ronner, you know, that “The future Christian will, you know, be a mystic or won’t be at all,” something like that. And I wonder if you could share about how you understand this sort of code word that, you know, in in Christian circles is getting thrown a lot around a lot more than I think it was a few generations ago. And I think Hannah and I are you know, have great excitement for mysticism. And there’s also a need to kinda clarify what we what we mean and what we don’t mean. And maybe you’re gonna tell me you have to wait till the book comes out, and that’s a fair answer. And I wonder if you could unpack this term for us–mysticism. 

M:           Sure. Well, Brandon, you know, I just did a spiritual biography of Desmond Tutu, and I tried to answer that question there because most people would never wanna see Tutu as a mystic. And, they … a lot of my colleagues in the academy wanna criticize me for mixing up genre and discourse. But mysticism is a practice of being one with God. And so mysticism is always this kind of unitive exercise of trying to be one with God. And the practice of contemplation–usually mysticism and contemplation are synonymous–but contemplation is the practice of trying to move out of the way of the distractions of that unitive way of knowing. So contemplation is the practice of silence. It’s the practice of being conscious of what’s there, as opposed to embracing the tropes and the super–the superficial ways of being, which is a default setting for sinful reality. The default setting is to settle upon self as the ultimate reality. And contemplation is the practice of knowing God. Contemplation is the practice of knowing self in ways that are not in that default setting of sin. So the director in The Cloud of Unknowing encourages the directee not to fixate on thinking that you know what that unitive outcome ultimately looks like, but to practice the contemplative life, in which you you’re not letting yourself get in the way. And allowing God to come and rescue self from default settings and allowing God to come and rescue self from superficiality.

               So those are some of the ways in which I move towards defining mysticism and the contemplative life. And, again, it’s challenging to so many of our sensibilities in the academy, especially to hold up someone like Desmond Tutu as a saint. That’s the ultimate description I’m trying to say he is in that spiritual biography. But I also wanna say he’s a mystic.

H:           Mhmmm. It strikes me that all of these four things are really about vision and seeing God and reality clearly. There are many reasons I’m so hung up on the mysticism–one is just because my PhD was on Gregory of Nyssa. And I think about knowing by unknowing and wonder a lot more than the average person probably.

               But one of the things that has come up a lot on this podcast is we, when we’ve asked people about early experiences of God or mystical experiences of God, we’ve gotten so many stories of God kind of becoming manifest to people in extra-special ways than I ever thought were really out there. And I think part of it is we just don’t talk to each other a lot about these things in our kind of buttoned-up Western, especially academic, culture. And I’ve just been blown away. And feel free to not answer this question in case it’s too imposing. But do you have any stories of God granting you particular vision in any of these kinds of ways through faith or activism or mysticism or maybe even culture?

M:           Sure. I’ve got a a stump speech that I usually tell to answer that question, Hannah. When I was in seminary …

H:           So I’m not the only crazy person going around asking you …

M:           No. That’s an essential question, I think. When I was in seminary, I was trying to negotiate the institutional church because, you know, I wanted to be that kind of free thinker and not be bound by an institutional church ordination and all that sort of stuff, which I think many of the Yale students are in those sort of existential crisis.

H:           Yeah. A lot of our people can relate to that. 

M:           Yeah. So I, it was once summer of 1989, I went to visit my sister in England. She was a JAG officer, and based, in Alconbury, England, and I was gonna go spend three weeks with her.

But as siblings are wont to do, we can only put up with each other for so long. So I got a British rail pass, and I set off on my own, and I found myself in Cardiff, Wales. And I was taught to go to church every Sunday, and it was Sunday morning. I left my bed and breakfast place, got on those cobblestone streets, and tried to find the right church. 

               And I saw another black guy, it seemed like he was carrying a guitar and a hymnal, had all the trappings of going to church on Sunday morning, and I became like a CIA agent or whatever. 

H:           Hot on the trail. 

M:           Yeah. Thinking he would veer off into one of those narrow streets and go into one of those house churches full of people who look like me, had the same kind of music, the same kind of theology. And as I was doing my surveillance work, a car drove up next to him. He got in and they drove away. My angel of God abandoned me. And then the bewitching hour on Sunday morning, the bells were tolling for me. I went into an Anglican church that could seat probably 2,000 people, had about 180 people, mostly elderly women, and it seemed like they had purple hair. And my favorite villain in science fiction, the Borg, came to mind.

               I was sitting there in the midst of this huge edifice with these individuals scattered around. And as long as … if you’re on a spaceship with the Borg, they’re so powerful they don’t care. You know, you can walk around just as long as you don’t present yourself as a threat. Because if you are a threat, they’ll annihilate you. And as I was sitting there in that Anglican church, I felt like I was surrounded by purple-haired Borg. You know, like, if I didn’t sit too close to their purse, you know, a black guy, the only black guy there, if I didn’t sit too close to their purse, everything was okay. 

               And I promise you, and this is probably paranoia, but when I went up to receive the chalice, it seemed like the people behind me were shuffling, in terms of they wanted to drink from the chalice behind me. And then to make things worse, if they could be worse, this vicar mounted this celestial staircase to the pulpit, and he announced the title of his sermon, “The Efficacy of Used Cars.” There was no reference to scripture. Jesus was not even mentioned in the sermon, and he even tried to sell his own used car.

H:           No. What? 

B:            Oh my god. 

M:           So to answer your question, as I sat there in the T. S. Eliot wasteland, I heard the clearest from God. In the desert tradition, they say you hear the clearest in the desert. And it was as if God was saying to me, “Michael, left to your own devices, look around and see what kind of church you would be in.” 

H:           Oh. Oh. No. 

M:           Left to your own devices, look at who you would follow to represent your church. Look at what you would naturally, in a Darwinian selection way, look at who you would want to be your church. And it was as if I heard the clearest from God that I’m not … that God is not calling me to a natural church, but to a supernatural one.

And one that goes beyond my expectations, my imagination. And in that Anglican church, I made a decision to be an Anglican. And usually, you don’t do it that way. Right?

H:           No. It’s not usually because it’s so depraved. 

M:           Yes. But I would challenge anybody that most of these saints–I’m not trying to say I’m a saint, but most of the people who have these major conversion experiences, they’re not converted based on these beautiful ways of being. They’re converted in many examples like what I went through in terms of developing a vocation. So God became more real to me in the need for God. As opposed to just trying to have God as decoration or God as a good idea. 

H:           The bow on top of the nice project I just completed. 

M:           Right. Yeah. And one of the dangers for us in the academy is that God is a good idea. So we have to guard against those sort of default settings and offer people ways of seeing this unitive, mystical way as a sign of hope. 

H:           Yeah. Gosh. When you said Wales, I thought it was gonna be like a great Rowan Williams story. Definitely a happy ending, but no. Just the wasteland. 

M:           Just the wasteland. 

H:           Which I mean, anybody. It’s available for anybody to go outside, look around, take it in.

M:            Freely offered to everyone. 

B:            I’m struck in the course of this conversation that, you know, you’ve spoken so clearly as a theologian. You’ve also spoken so clearly as a spiritual director, and there are moments in which you kind of both identities were happening simultaneously. And I wonder if for a moment, maybe a closing moment, you would be our spiritual director and help, you know, a potential seminarian listening to the podcast who’s maybe applied, you know, to Berkeley or a leader who feels overwhelmed and maybe looking out at an empty church or just, you know, any sort of citizen of the world who’s looking across the globe and, you know, looking at climate crisis and seeing it … political implosions happening across our world and wondering what to make of all this, and is there is there in fact a word of hope for the wasteland? Can you be the spiritual director to us and to those listeners who might find themselves in those places? 

M:           Yeah. Well, since you’re in homiletics, Brandon, Fred Craddock was the commencement speaker when I graduated from seminary. And he stood up, at the commencement ceremony, and he was supposed to give the address. And he became like Winston Churchill and got up and said just a few lines and sat down. And this is what he said. “Don’t be afraid if the church dies. Jesus did.” And basically, that’s all he said. And then he sat down. 

               And I think I think what I was trying to say also in my own kind of origin story of faith, the true desire is for God. And, you know, Jesus tried to help us to be clear about what that desire is. You know, loving God with all of your heart, your soul, your mind. But Jesus was also saying, When you do that, when you love God, you cannot help but love others. So in other words, you can’t do one or the other. And so I’m writing a book, Ubuntu as an Atonement Theology, which is my next project. The premise of the book is God would not exist unless there was someone to love. And so the deepest thing I would hold out to, you know, seminarians coming is not to be afraid of the challenges, the sociological statistics, especially of mainline churches. Just follow your call. Keep aligning your heart’s deep gladness with the world’s deep hunger, and trust God. 

H:           Trust. Trust in that resurrection. In other words, have faith.

M:           Have faith. 

B:            Alright. That was such a rich conversation. And, especially given Professor Battle’s emphasis on mysticism and prayer, I thought we’d end with a prayer from Archbishop Tutu who ordained Reverend Battle and whose, I think, spirit is definitely sort of woven throughout this new book and woven throughout these essays. And so often we think about prayer as something that ought to comfort us, and hopefully, our prayer lives do comfort us many times, but this is actually a prayer inviting God to disturb us, from Archbishop Tutu. So let’s pray. 

Disturb us, oh, Lord, when we are too well pleased with ourselves, when our dreams have come true because we dreamed too little, because we sailed too close to the shore. Disturb us, oh Lord, when with the abundance of things we possess we have lost our thirst for the water of life. When having fallen in love with time, we have ceased to dream of eternity. And in our efforts to build a new earth, we have allowed our vision of heaven to grow dim.

Stir us, O Lord, to dare more boldly, To venture into wider seas, With the storms show thy mastery, where losing sight of land we shall find the stars. In the name of the one who pushed back the horizons of our hopes and invited the brave to follow. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen. 

H:           Thanks for listening to the Leaders Way podcast. You can learn more about this episode at berkeleydivinity.yale.edu/podcast. Follow along with us on Instagram at theleadersway.podcast. And you can rate and review us on your podcast app and be sure to hit follow so you never miss an episode. 

B:            And if you’d like this episode, please share it with a friend. Until next time. 

H:           Peace be with you.