Matthew Kaemingk:
Welcome to Zealots at the Gate, a podcast of Comment magazine. I’m Matthew Kaemingk.
Shadi Hamid:
I’m Shadi Hamid.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Together we research, politics, religion, and the future of democracy at Fuller Seminaries, Mouw Institute of Faith and Public Life.
Shadi Hamid:
We are writing a book together. This podcast represents an informal space where we can talk about how to live with deep difference. Thanks so much for joining us.
Welcome to Zealots at the Gate. Make sure to subscribe wherever you listen. Please leave us a review. We always enjoy five star reviews, but any review will do, as long as you’re honest. Join the conversation. You can ask us questions by using the hashtag #ZealotsPod on Twitter, or feel free to email us at Zealotscomment.org. We always like to hear from you. Matt’s Christian, I’m Muslim, Matt’s a theologian, I’m a political scientist. We have some other differences too, but we always love to talk about them here on Zealots at the Gate. And with that, Matt, you want to introduce us to our special topic today?
Matthew Kaemingk:
I’d love to. Actually, it’s a little bit depressing. We’re going to talk about political depression. We’ve got a presidential election coming up and it looks like it might be Donald Trump and Joe Biden. And I think that that prospect fills Americans of many different political persuasions with a sense of depression, apathy, sloth, resignation. And it seems to me, important for you and I, Shadi, to talk a little bit about political depression, political anxiety, resignation. You’ve been writing a little bit about this professionally, but also just personally about the ways in which you’ve distanced yourself a little bit from political life. And of course, politics has been a major part of your career, but also your personal life there in Washington DC. You’re surrounded by it, you’re active on Twitter, you hang out with politicos in the evening for fun, which is ridiculous to me.
But recently, there’ve been a number of stories coming out about the ways in which the news and politics and social media is devastating to our mental health and happiness and how swimming in it is really actually quite bad for us. And you’ve been reflecting on that personally. And so I wonder if we might start off with just big picture of what are you seeing in the research and what have you been writing about? And then we might get a little more personally into why is Shadi checking out a little bit on all things political and how’s that going? But first, what are we seeing out there in terms of the research on politics and mental health? What’s going on?
Shadi Hamid:
Well, there is definitely a crisis of meaning, despair, belonging, depression. The recent CDC report said that one out of every three teenage American girls has contemplated suicide. That’s a remarkable number. There’s a 2022 study that estimates that anywhere between 50 million and 85 million Americans suffer from what’s called politically induced fatigue. Insomnia, loss of temper and impulse control problems, all again tied to the political. And 40% of American adults reported that politics was a significant source of stress in their lives, while 5% reported suicidal thoughts due to politics. And we’ll include a link to that study by the political scientist, Kevin Smith, in the show notes for people who want to read on. But that just gives a little bit of a taste. But more broadly, I think we intuitively know that something feels off and we see it around us, whether it’s unhappiness, depression, anxiety, panic, fear, outrage, all these negative emotions.
And oftentimes, at least for progressives and left-leaning folks, it’s tied to fears around the political state of America, particularly with a potential Trump presidency, part two looming in the background. So if anything, I think some of these metrics are going to get worse in the coming two years if things move in a particular direction. So I think there’s a real sense of urgency to actually confront some of these questions head on and try to make sense of what’s going on here. There is also, I think, an ironic twist that the happiness literature is massive. There are literally hundreds of books about aspects of how to become more happy. There’s very popular podcast. There’s one that I listen to called The Happiness Lab that Laurie Santos, a Yale professor, hosts.
We have all this access to how to be happier, yet it doesn’t seem to be working. There seems to be a disconnect. So never, at least my guess is we’ve never had so much on how to be happy and so much of an inability to actually be happy. So something’s off, in any number of different ways. And I think religion, or the lack thereof, is part of the story here. And I think secular commentators don’t always love addressing that part of it. All of this is happening as America becomes significantly less religious, that there’s a precipitous drop in church attendance in religious affiliation and identification, particularly in the past two decades. So that might have something to do with it, but we can explore some of these things in greater depth. But I’m also thinking about it more on in a personal sense as well. And we can talk about that too.
Matthew Kaemingk:
I’d love to dig into that, but before we get to the personal side of it, just, you said maybe it has something to do with less religion in our lives. What are you thinking about there? You left us with a little bit of a haunting comment there, but what do you think is going on there in terms of America, not going to church, not going to mosque as much, but engaging in this political mental health issue? What’s going on?
Shadi Hamid:
Well, we know that there is a correlation between religiosity and satisfaction and fulfillment. Now, it’s complicated what the relationship is, because people who are religious tend to be part of religious community. So it could be that the sense of community is what is giving them the ,stronger sense of satisfaction. But I think it is fair to say that religion is correlated with belonging, a more solid sense of identity being part of a group that’s larger than yourself, having a cause or a mission that’s larger than yourself.
So without that, you have to look for alternative sources of belonging and community. And the alternatives aren’t always better, and maybe their basis is a bit more flimsy. If you’re looking for your sense of belonging from a political movement, from a political party, that’s probably not going to be as spiritually nourishing. It’s not going to be as community oriented. It’s not going to encourage you to give charity to the less fortunate. So is a danger of basically-
Matthew Kaemingk:
Let’s make this practical. Imagine I want to be a part of group of environmental activists and we go out marching together and we do petitions together and we have blogs that we share, or I want to be a part of Trump rallies and we make our signs and we get dressed up and we go to Trump rallies and we hang out afterwards. There’s community there and I’m making friends and we’re hanging out and we have a common mission to elect Donald Trump or to save the environment or save the planet. That’s not analogous to religion. Talk a little bit more about what would be the difference between that and becoming a part of your local mosque or church?
Shadi Hamid:
Well, the difference is what you invest your hope in. If your mission is tied to a narrow political objective, the danger is, if you can’t realize that objective, then you suffer through a stage of disillusion or you feel like life is futile. You often see this, I think in conversations around climate, climate can seem so overwhelming as a civilizational challenge that it actually does lead people to despair, including by not having kids. There is a phenomenon known as childless by climate. That’s actually a real thing. It’s crazy. It really is. And if you are going to Trump rallies and you’re all about that, and then Trump loses in 2024, then what do you have left?
So these are things that are much more temporary and they’re not transcendent. They don’t speak to ultimate questions of who we are, at least they shouldn’t. Now, some people might say that advocacy around climate is an ultimate concern for them, and in some sense it’s transcendent, but that suggests another danger. These things cannot replace religion or they shouldn’t replace religion. And I think people are looking for so much from their politics, they want politics to give them some kind of final judgment or some utopian sense of the world. They want their deepest questions answered through politics. But politics by its very nature, I would argue, is not capable of answering those questions on a deeper, foundational level.
Matthew Kaemingk:
But what does this look like for you on a personal basis in your own friend groups? And just for Shadi, you’ve had a bit of a personal bit of reflection on this over the last 12 months, a bit of a shift. And I was wondering if you could just open up a little bit and talk us through this, what’s been going on with Shadi on this?
Shadi Hamid:
Not to be too self-indulgent here, but can you give me a sense of what you think that shift is, not only through our podcast conversations, but also our private conversations where I’ve maybe opened up more, just so listeners have a better sense of what we’re really talking about here. And I’d just be curious how you would describe it.
Matthew Kaemingk:
I get a sense there’s a little dash of disillusionment, with having worked so hard in political life. You’ve really invested the last 20 years of your life just really digging in and doing good, solid research and advocacy and volunteering. And I think you worked on the Bernie Sanders campaign a little bit, and you met with and advocated with the Obama administration and they didn’t listen to you.
I get this sense that there’s a little bit of disillusionment, there’s also just a little bit of exhaustion with Twitter and this sense that maybe you did invest too much of your life in politics and it didn’t provide you with the kind of happiness maybe that you thought of. Or you’re starting to think about broader things in life, like family and friendship and going on vacation and art and movies. And so you have diverse parts of what it means to be Shadi, and politics doesn’t fulfill all those things. And so, that’s my little cycle analysis of Shadi. But-
Shadi Hamid:
I love it.
Matthew Kaemingk:
And then it just comes out publicly when you write these pieces about withdrawing from the news, and maybe we shouldn’t be quite so informed. And I watched you get quite a bit of flack for that article. So anyways, that’s Matt’s take on Shadi, but I want to hear yours in terms of what’s been going on over the last year.
Shadi Hamid:
Well, maybe these articles that I’ve put out about not following the news are actually subtle cries for help, and they’re calling for an intervention of sorts from my friends who see these articles and they’re like, “Well, Shadi is still being quite productive. He’s still writing a lot, but he’s writing in a different way. Is he trying to tell us something?” So, okay, a few things here. One is coming to terms with definitive of life in a little bit more of a direct way. We only have on average about 4,000 weeks to live. And there’s actually a really good book about this called Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman. For those of you who are interested, I’d highly recommend it. But also, I think the average male life expectancy in America is 76. Not to be morbid or anything, but I’m 39. So you just start to think to yourself, “Well, what do I really want to do in this second stage of my life?”
And where you feel, I don’t want to say running out of time, but there’s definitely a sense of wanting to make things count and to try one’s best to live a better life, whatever that might mean. And that requires obviously figuring out what a good life or a better life actually entails. And then some of this, as you mentioned, is provoked by a growing sense of disillusion. The topics that I used to work on a lot and still do work on, they haven’t really worked out so well. Like democracy in the Middle East. This is probably the lowest point it’s been maybe even in my lifetime. I don’t think that’s hyperbole. And the last remaining hope that I and others had was on Tunisia, which is now in the process of becoming a full-blown dictatorship. And the window to try to reverse those trends is closing rapidly in the matter of months. It might be too late for Tunisia.
And my side of the debate lost. We were, during the Arab Spring and afterwards, really calling for a pro-democracy policy in the Middle East, that the Obama administration and then subsequent administrations, should actually prioritize democratization in the region. That didn’t happen, and we fell back on the old ways of supporting authoritarian regimes and all that. So it’s like, after all this repression in the Middle East, it’s going to take Arabs on the ground some time to recover. They’re not going to be able to muster the spirit and the willingness to sacrifice anytime soon because they already sacrificed so much. They tried and there was a sense of failure after the decline of the Arab Spring. So I think there’s just a sense of exhaustion all the way through, whether it’s in the region, but also as Americans looking at the region, and we say, “Well, hey, it looks hopeless.”
I don’t think it is. But that sense is a powerful one, that sense of futility. And there’s only so much I can do on the outside to try to get folks in the Biden administration to change their policy. And I think at some level I’ve come to terms with the fact that I’ll do the best that I can do, but I don’t know if I can do a lot more than that. And coming to terms also with the fact that the best I can do might not be good enough. I’m just one person, I’m one voice. And that’s why I wrote a piece recently. It was titled something like, “Is it Enough to Tie Your Camel and Trust in God?” And that is a reference to a hadith that I’ve mentioned on this podcast a couple times, which I like a lot.
Matthew Kaemingk:
So I want to get to the Muslim resources in a second. But first, before we get to that, because what I want to end this conversation with is, how might Islam and Christianity actually that have some resources to help citizens endure and process their political grief and frustration and exhaustion. I want to get to that, but first I want to ask you, what are the non-religious ways that you see political people dealing with failure and exhaustion and frustration? So, as you look around DC when people lose elections or causes or whatever, and as you watch American culture, how are we actually dealing with political loss and frustration? What are our coping methods that are not Islamic or Christian?
Shadi Hamid:
One is outrage, which is actually a pretty strong and even pleasurable emotion sometimes. There is a thrill to knowing what you’re up against. There’s a thrill to seeing your enemies as beyond redemption because it makes you feel a sense of moral righteousness. So people look at the latest news, they see something about Donald Trump and how bad he is, and they get outraged. But then the question is, this perpetual mode of outrage, what does it actually lead to? What benefit does it offer? And that’s where I think the benefits are quite limited. We already all know, well, maybe not. We all know Trump is bad, but chances are, you being outraged about it is not going to move the needle one way or the other. People are fairly immovable in their perceptions of him at this point. So I think the thrill of having an enemy, and that goes well beyond someone like Trump, it can be applied to anti-immigrant sentiment, Muslims, Hispanics, whatever it might be.
But also outrage. I fall into this from a different perspective where I see hyper-wokeness and I feel tempted to be like, “Oh my God, look how crazy and ridiculous it is.” And often it is crazy and ridiculous, but why am I getting off on this sense of, why do I need to reinforce that sentiment on a perpetual basis? And that’s actually one reason that I don’t like reading too much anti-woke stuff because it does get me worked up and then I have to check myself, and it’s a test for me. But sometimes, I know it’s bad out there in various ways. Do I have to know about every additional bad implication of wokeness?
So I think that’s one. But I would also say that work-aholism is endemic in Washington DC. And I imagine for any of you who live in major cities, you might see something similar, is that people treat their dissatisfaction by working more because the more you work, the less time you have to actually ponder your own existence. And I think it is a avoidance mechanism, where you want to avoid confronting realities and truths about your life and how you’re using your time. And sometimes it’s better just to work harder and more intensely, and that can help you stave off those feelings of angst or of not fulfilling more meaningful life goals. The problem is, as we know, is that that can result in burnout. You can do that for a certain period of time, but you reach a limit.
Matthew Kaemingk:
I think, so on my side, out in the suburbs in the Midwest, I think the way people disengage from politics is through apathy, cynicism, a good dose of Netflix and consumption at Costco or whatever else of just, I’m just going to consume and enjoy my materialist life and I’m not going to worry about the injustice that’s happening in the city or around the world or those sorts of things. I’m going to fill my life with things. But in general, it is looking for ways to distract oneself from political injustice or to numb oneself.
Shadi Hamid:
And there’s any number of ways to numb oneself, and a lot of them aren’t particularly healthy. And I think at the basis of all of this is this question of who do we put our trust in? What do we put our trust in? Do we put our trust in other human beings in specific political causes, or is there something that we can put our trust in that offers up a different kind of relationship between… obviously here I’m referring to-
Matthew Kaemingk:
To God.
Shadi Hamid:
The Divine.
Matthew Kaemingk:
So maybe clue us into a few different resources you go to within your own Islamic faith that keep you from fully checking out. Because to be clear, you have not checked out of politics. You are still engaged in many, many ways, but what are those resources within Islam that you can turn to that are not numbing yourself with Netflix or alcohol or whatever else you might do to distract or fall into sloth and resignation?
Shadi Hamid:
So this brings me back to my favorite hadith, which I just want to say a little bit more about for those of you who haven’t heard me talk about it, which is that you should tie your camel and then trust in God, which obviously is a little bit outdated since most of you don’t have camels. But hopefully, you can imagine a world where camels exist. And in this case, would be 7th century Arabia, in the time of the prophet Muhammad.
And basically here, the idea I think is simple but powerful, which is, you have a camel and you’re probably going to some other city for trade. You have to leave your camel for a period of time, but you should do your part and tie it, and then you hope that it won’t go away and you’ve done your part. But there is still a risk that even after you do that, something bad could happen. Someone comes and steals it or cuts the rope or whatever else it might be, or the camel, I don’t know exactly how camels work, but maybe there’s like a health problem while you’re away doing something else with your merchants and all that. Clearly, I have no idea how people used to live in the 7th century.
Matthew Kaemingk:
You’re really letting me down as an Egyptian American here right now.
Shadi Hamid:
But there is a relief that’s offered, a liberation that’s offered in this saying of the prophet, because once you do your part, you can learn to let go. And you do that by putting your trust not in your own capabilities, but in something that is beyond you, that at some level the only answer is God. And then there’s obviously a risk of fatalism here where you say, “Well, if God wills, In sha’Allah,” whatever it might be. But what this hadith is saying is that it’s not enough to put your trust in God. You have to take that first step of doing something concrete, of doing whatever is in your power to secure the outcome that you desire. So it’s not thoughts and prayers after gun violence, mass shootings. Oftentimes, Christian commentators and right wing folks will be criticized for just offering up another shrug of the shoulders.
Thoughts and prayers. Thoughts and prayers are important as we’ve talked about in another episode, but there should be also concrete action. So I think having both of those is I think really core to my own understanding of what Islam commands of us. And obviously, it can be hard to find that balance where you’re taking some kind of appropriate action to undo wrongs that you see in society, versus knowing when it’s time to take a step back and say, “Well, we fought the battle. The battle was lost, and now we have to regroup, maybe look inward, reassess our position, spend some time with self-care,” as secular folks might call it. Self-care is really just the secular version of the stuff that religious people have done throughout millennia, which is, get closer to God, pray, do an extra prayer, try to be a little bit more spiritually in touch in terms of your own faith. That is a kind of self-care.
And maybe I’ll just also mention one thing that came up in the last episode with Christine Emba on Rethinking Sex. I mentioned something that I playfully called the breakup verse, but I feel like Islam, but Christianity, Judaism and other faith traditions are replete with these kinds of exhortation. But the breakup verse, and I called it that because it is oftentimes what friends and family will cite after you go through a pretty bad breakup. So this is a verse from the Quran, chapter two. “God says to the believers, ‘It is possible that you dislike a thing which is good for you and that you love a thing which is bad for you. Allah knows best and not’.” It’s much better in the Arabic. But the idea here I think is clear, that if you suffer some kind of misfortune or something that you think is really bad and you’re thinking to yourself, “How am I going to go on? Why would God do this to me?”
God may know something that you don’t know, that in some kind of indirect or roundabout way, this will actually lead to something better, that there is a wisdom in it turning out this way, and that you have no way of knowing for sure because you don’t have advanced knowledge of the future. But similarly, and I think this is actually the part that’s more powerful in some ways, if you love something, if you’re so happy about a particular outcome, it might actually over time end up being bad for you. So it goes both ways. And I think there are secular versions of this where people will say things like, “Be careful what you wish for. You might get it.”
Matthew Kaemingk:
But I get the sense though, if you’re participating in a lot of Donald Trump rallies and you’re hanging out with these people, or you’re participating in a lot of radical, ecological rallies, the purpose of those things is not really to get you to reflect critically on your own desires and grow in wisdom and self-knowledge. In many ways, Donald Trump is trying to inflame your desires and affirm you, that everything that you love, I love, and everything that you hate, I hate, and I’m with you and you’re with me.
There’s not a lot of self-reflection in a lot of these political movements. Whereas the quote you’re talking about there, it might be good for you to doubt yourself, it might be good for you to doubt your heart, and maybe that thing that you long for should not be self-actualized. And if you’re paying a personal life coach, you’re going to want a personal life coach that’s going to affirm your desires and help you lead the life that you desire and want.
Shadi Hamid:
First of all, we don’t always know what we actually want. So there’s a first step of how do we find out the things that we desire. And then there are different kinds of desire. So there’s just a lot you have to work through in figuring out what should motivate you. And this is really, again, at the heart of religious traditions, is regulating desire and providing a structure with which to understand how we make sense of thick and thin desires, and desires that are temporary versus long term needs and wants. Without a religious structure, you do, first of all, you just have overwhelming choice. You don’t have a clear structure. And then that can create a lot of internal chaos. And that’s where we have this language of self-actualization and all of that where we tell people to follow whatever their heart desires. All these sayings, “Live your truth,” whatever, but how do you know what your truth is?
Matthew Kaemingk:
So I want to come at this from the Christian side, and I think I’ve found a somewhat interesting juxtaposition here between Barack Obama and a Catholic priest. So stick with me here.
Shadi Hamid:
I’m intrigued.
Matthew Kaemingk:
So of course, there are many good Christians in the world or in America who are Republicans and who are Democrats. There’s Christian language and belief and virtue that’s active in both of these parties. However, they do get swept up, these parties, into rhetoric that is quite detached from the Christian faith. And I want to point out that the difference between these two different statements, one is, first of all, I’ll read from Barack Obama, which is a classic line that would often come out here. Here’s what Obama says. He says, “Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” There’s this apotheosis of the people. We are the solution. And he’s speaking to his crew. We are going to change the world. That change is going to come from within us.
Now I want you to listen to this prayer that was prayed in honor of a Catholic priest named Oscar Romero, Oscar Romero, and he worked very hard for political justice and liberation in El Salvador. He gave his life. In fact, he died working very hard and he was losing much of the time. And his is not one of triumphalism, but this was the prayer that was prayed in his memory. And here they’re reflecting on a life of political activism. Here’s the prayer. “It helps now and then to step back and take the long view. The kingdom of God is not only beyond our efforts, it is beyond our vision. We accomplish in our lifetime only a fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work. Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us. No statement says all that could be said. No prayer fully expresses our faith. No confession brings perfection.”
And going further down, “This is what we are about. We plant seeds that will one day grow, we water the seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise. We lay foundations that will need further development. We provide yeast that produces effects far beyond our capabilities. We cannot do everything. And there’s a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something and to do it well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest. We never see the end results, but that’s the difference between the master builder and the worker. We are workers, not master builders. We are ministers, not Messiahs. We are prophets of a future, not our own.”
So let me rush back really quickly and read Barack Obama, and hear the difference. “Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”
Shadi Hamid:
Fascinating.
Matthew Kaemingk:
The difference there of this humility, that I’m a part of something and I don’t even know all of where it’s going. I’m going to do this one small piece, I have this calling. And I know that it’s important because it’s part of a larger work, but I can’t see it. I can’t control it. I’m not in charge of it. And so I humbly do my part, as opposed to we are, it is on us to save this country. And it immediately puts me back into those surveys that you were talking about. And one of them had to do with the fact that political depression and anxiety is higher on the political left than it is on the political right.
This urgency amongst the secular left to save the world from climate change, racism, there is this eschatological immediacy. And what’s interesting, of course, is here you have Oscar Romero, he wasn’t resigned, he wasn’t detached from political life, far from it. He gave his life for a political cause, but he didn’t imagine that it was all on him to save the world. And that juxtaposition is, I think we find that in our faith of this understanding that we are workers, not the master builder. And that recognition enables a sustainable political life. When you contemplate that finitude. Earlier you were talking about Time Management for Mortals, the fact that we are mortal. And it seems to me that you need something immortal to recognize your own mortality. You need something infinite to reflect on your own finitude.
Well, I don’t know how that hits you, Shadi.
Shadi Hamid:
That hits me, the Obama quote is fascinating in retrospect because I remember being a believer in 2008, and I used the word believer on purpose because it did feel religiously infused. I think a lot of us felt an almost spiritual element to the early years of Barack Obama. And many in the media went along with this in various ways. There was a lot of portrayals of Obama looking out into the promised land. Even the description of the promised land is obviously using religious imagery, but you’d also have a halo around his head and light would be shining onto him. There was a messiah complex, that it almost felt like God had sent him in some way to say, in effect, to Americans, “Look, you had George W. Bush, it really sucked. The Iraq War was terrible. But you know what? In my justice and mercy, I have given unto you Barack Obama, and he will make what is wrong right, and he will bring the universe into coherence once again.”
So obviously, being a little bit overwrought there, but that was the tenor of the time, especially for those of you who are too young to remember what it was like to be in that moment. And I didn’t think that there was anything wrong with, “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” But in the interim period of 15 years, as I’ve become more religiously inclined and more aware of how the so-called secular and the sacred interact and intertwine, now I’m listening to that and I’m like, we are the ones we’ve been waiting for. That doesn’t sound like a good idea. So I have the tools now to understand the dangers of a phrase like that. And it’s no surprise that we’ve seen profound disillusion in the post Obama period, because he promised so much, and we invested so much hope into him and his movement and what he seemed to represent. And we projected a burden onto him that he couldn’t bear, because no man can bear that.
But this gets me to something else I thought when you were juxtaposing those two quotes, which is, political movements, secular movements, do tend to be outcomes oriented. They do tend to be consequentialist. If you’re going to Trump rallies, the outcome that you’re looking for is for Trump to win. If you’re working for a climate change organization, you want to actually make some dents into the climate change catastrophe and so forth. So at some point, you’re going to have to do some measuring of tangible metrics, and you may not like what you see at the end. Islam, however, and I think this is true for most faith traditions, is not an outcomes oriented religion. It’s very expressly not an outcomes oriented religion.
And there’s a hadith that says this quite simply and powerfully, where the prophet says, “Actions are judged according to their intentions.” That’s really important. And it might seem obvious to folks, intentions matter, but I think we’re moving more and more away from that, where even the way we talk about racism, that it doesn’t matter what the intention of the speaker was in saying something that’s potentially controversial or non-woke or isn’t down with the times. We look at the outcome and we say, it doesn’t matter what this person thought, it doesn’t matter what was in his heart, the only thing that matters is observable behavior and observable outcome.
So systemic racism, discourse around how we measure disparate outcomes according to ethnic groups. So it’s not whether there was a racial intent, it was whether there was a disparate racial outcome that seem to privilege one group over the other, regardless of intention. So I do think this is actually a very profound difference in how we assess the world around us and how we make judgements. So I think, how do we live a non outcomes oriented life? How do we move away from looking at ourselves as basically outcomes generators that were more than that? So that’s where I think religion does offer something quite different from the secular approach.
Matthew Kaemingk:
And I think, one more thing I wanted to put in here before we close up, it has to do with this modern desire to numb oneself or distract oneself. And it seems to me that the Christian faith has no interest in numbing or distracting the soul. In fact, historically, Christians have thought of this as a sin. The sin of sloth or sedia, this weakening of the muscles and the mind and the heart, that alcohol would deaden you. And this desire for a heart that’s inflamed and alive and is really willing to feel real political joy and despair, that it’s okay to be angry, it’s okay to be sad, it’s okay to be joyful. And we see this most clearly in the Psalms. And I was just listening to this lovely lecture, which we can share by Dr. Laura [inaudible 00:44:30] around the Psalms and politics.
And the Psalms, of course is a book of prayers in the Bible, which are very emotional. Some of them are very joyful, some of them are sad, some of them are angry, some of them are depressed. But it is this collection of prayers and emotions that we can share with God and with others of how we’re feeling. And so, sometimes the person who’s praying is very angry that something terrible has happened and is saying, “God, where are you?” Or is saying, “God, this wealthy man is crushing the poor and you’re not doing anything. Where are you?” Or “where is this rain? Why have you forgotten us?” And it seems to me that the Christian faith enables political citizens who follow it to be emotionally alive about their politics and communicate those things, and it presses them to do so, rather than deaden their hearts with consumption and Netflix and cynicism.
And then finally, it has this eschatological understanding that God is fundamentally in charge. And so ultimately, despair is not an option for us because we know that that God is in charge and that God is in sovereign control. So God’s sovereignty allows an acceptance of my finitude. It also empowers a sense of political hope that one day justice will be done, even though I can’t accomplish that justice, that I am not the person I’ve been waiting for. I’m waiting for Jesus, not Barack Obama. And I can tell the difference between the two.
Shadi Hamid:
Well, this last point about ultimate justice is really important and it makes me think that it could be cool to have an episode that more directly takes on questions of hellfire punishment and so forth. But I do find a little bit of solace in the idea that there is a hell, because sometimes we see profound injustices and then we ask ourselves, how can we let go of this? How can we let this persist in front of our very eyes? We see some great injustice and we don’t have any power to change it through politics or through whatever means it might be. And there is, I think, something reassuring that some of the worst people in human history, and let me just take them, because there’s obviously clear cases, whether it’s Putin, Hitler, pick your favorite dictator, whatever it might be. And a lot of dictators get off scot-free and don’t have to account for their sins in this life. And that can be a really hard thing to contend with. Why does God permit evil, the so-called question of theodicy?
And I think that the idea that God will in the end provide a true and final accounting does allow us, I think, to feel a little bit better about things that we can change and that are out of our hands. And I should say to our listeners, if you want to hear more about hell and stuff like that, definitely send us a note and see if you can encourage us in that direction. But I did want to, Matt, as we move towards an ending, I’m curious about if there’s any personal examples, since we started off with some of my own personal struggles that have maybe intensified as of late. I’m curious what you found helpful in your own life, in your own religious practice, that could be inspiring to others, where you’ve struggled with a particular political development or political outcome where you felt a sense of futility.
And then, maybe you did. I think many Christians do fall into some kind of despair. I think we all do at one point or another. It is very hard, even people who are equipped with faith and something transcendent, mental health concerns are now pretty universal. And I think we’re confronting more and more the fact that stigma around mental health has prevented believers from pursuing treatment in some cases. And there’s greater awareness of that, I think, now. But I don’t know. I don’t know if you have any thoughts about how you or others in the Christian community have maybe dealt with this in your own lives?
Matthew Kaemingk:
Well, I think one way that Christians deal with political loss is taking on the mantle of being martyrs, of we’re suffering for Jesus. So we’ve lost, and so we’re suffering. Others take on the language of exiles, that we’ve been removed from our home. America was our home, but now we don’t feel like it’s our home anymore. And so we can have a martyr or a persecution complex when we lose an election or a political cause. And we can cultivate a self-righteousness of, well, we’re going to be the remnant of the faithful, holding it down.
So that that’s one way that Christians handle loss badly, political loss badly. And I think we can find this in any religious or political community, is licking your wounds and saying, “Well, I’m going to move to Canada.” For me personally, I have a couple of political issues or political opinions that are just absolute losers, that will never win in America. And I’ve honestly accepted that.
Shadi Hamid:
Can you say what they are?
Matthew Kaemingk:
Totally embarrass myself? Well, I’ll say one is, this is a total loser. And all this issue does is lose me friends and respect. So the Dutch have this model in the Netherlands of funding every school. So Muslim schools, Catholic schools, Jewish schools. The government believes that everyone has a right to education, but the government doesn’t have a right to decide which schools should get funding and which one shouldn’t. So every school that does a good job of teaching math and history and language and all those sorts of things, regardless of the school’s religious background, it receives government funding. So I think that is a just and good thing to do. And I think it’s worked in the Netherlands and some version of that would be very good for America’s terrible public school system.
Shadi Hamid:
Classic. Matt’s hobbyhorse. Love it.
Matthew Kaemingk:
But here’s the thing, in my lifetime I don’t believe that’s ever going to happen. So how do I respond to that? I do other things with my life and my energy than that political issue, but I do invest in my local Christian school and I send my kids to that. And so I have a small political response of investing in these schools and trying to help them. I recently helped to develop a curriculum around Christianity and politics for-
Shadi Hamid:
Oh wow.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Christian high schools around the country, to help young Christians think about politics in ways that are not destructive. So if you want to learn about that curriculum for your high schooler, you can go to civichospitality.org. You can learn a little bit about our project.
Shadi Hamid:
Oh, cool. I would like to send my future kids to your Christian high school.
Matthew Kaemingk:
There we go.
Shadi Hamid:
Because if you’ve designed a curriculum-
Matthew Kaemingk:
That’s actually quite common for Muslim families in Europe to send their kids to Christian schools, as opposed to secular ones. And so, of course, some schools might not let you because you need to be a part of a church. I’ll talk to them for you, Shadi.
Shadi Hamid:
Okay, cool, that I have that direct channel. But I want to push you on this though, because you said that you’ve given up, that public funding of religious schools isn’t going to happen in America in your lifetime. But have you tied your camel on that? Have you done, I don’t know what one would do to actually try to make that happen. I imagine, well, there would probably be some constitutional constraints, and it’s probably a very challenging thing to do considering America’s approach historically on religion in the state. But I wonder, is there more that you could potentially do, and are you giving away the game too easily and falling back on, well, let me just help my local school, when in fact, if more people like you who feel strongly about this issue actually mobilized and organized, perhaps you could make a dent in the public or policy debate.
Matthew Kaemingk:
In answer to the question, number one, absolutely. There’s absolutely more that I could do, and there are opportunities for me to get involved politically on that particular issue. In answer to the question, is it right or wrong for me to get more or less involved? That’s a difficult question. I think that politics is one of prudence and picking the battles that you can win and that you can’t. And so, deciding where.
The other challenge is that of alignment, is that, if I were to get involved in that, I would be aligned with some elements of the Republican Party that I don’t really like and I don’t really want to be aligned with them. So, in the Christian school movement in America, some of them are quite, they’re just not people I would want to hang out with. Let’s just say that. They’re not people I’d want to chill with. So that’s part of the difficulty of political action, is you have to align yourself with forces and individuals that you don’t find very compelling or sometimes ethical. But anyways, there’s a lot more to that.
Shadi Hamid:
And I’m curious, what was the second issue that’s hopeless?
Matthew Kaemingk:
One of them is localism. So I’m very much a localist, so I believe the federal government should be a lot smaller than it is. And neither the Democratic nor the Republican Party has any interest in making the federal government smaller.
Shadi Hamid:
Cut that Department of Education.
Matthew Kaemingk:
And defense and all of it. So Shadi, you’re making me show my cards on a variety of things that just make me unpopular. So I appreciate that, man. Wanting a small federal government, by the way, does not mean that I’m a libertarian at all. It just means that I’d rather a lot of spending be local. It’s not that I-
Shadi Hamid:
Local and state level.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah.
Shadi Hamid:
You believe in public funding, in the state playing a role. You just disagree with others on which state, really?
Matthew Kaemingk:
I just don’t like Washington. Look, I’m from Washington state, not Washington DC. And out in Washington state, we don’t really trust the people on the East Coast to make decisions for us. So that’s just part of my-
Shadi Hamid:
And for good reason. I don’t blame you guys.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Well, friends, this has been a great discussion. I’ve enjoyed this, Shadi. I do want to point our dear listeners back to our conversation around prayer and politics, because I think that it’s very relevant to these discussions around political anxiety, depression, because the practice of the prayer in both Islam and Christianity really is a wrestling with one’s finitude before the infinite, that is God.
And I think what we really picked up on here today is the fact that our political movements do need to reckon with their finitude and their mortality. And so, I would encourage you all to check out that episode if you haven’t checked it out before. And we really do look forward to your comments and ideas and thoughts on how you deal with political resignation and cynicism and despair.
Shadi Hamid:
Amen to that. Well, you guys heard it here, go pray. Thanks for listening to Zealots at the Gate. We hope you enjoyed this one. I certainly did. Nice to share some more of the personal elements. If you like what you heard, check out our other episodes and also check out our host, Comment Magazine at comment.org. And again, we do want to hear from you. Find us on Twitter, @shadihamid and @matthewkaemingk. Note the Dutch spelling, I guess I always make that joke. Or use the hashtag #ZealotsPod. You can also-
Matthew Kaemingk:
That’s a microaggression against Dutch people. Kaemingk.
Shadi Hamid:
True.
Matthew Kaemingk:
It’s K-A-E-M-I-N-G-K. You can write to us at zealots@comment.org. And please do, because we love getting your mail.
Our thanks as well to Fuller Seminary’s, Mouw Institute of Faith and Public Life. They are our dear sponsor. Zealots at the Gate is hosted by Comment Magazine, produced by Allie Crummy, audience strategy by Matt Crummy, and editorial direction by Miss Anne Snyder. Until next time, I am Matthew Kaemingk.
Shadi Hamid:
And I’m Shadi Hamid. Thanks for joining us. Peace.
