It's in the Code ep 184: “A Crappy Sermon?”

0:00... AXIS MOONDY Hello and welcome to It's in the Code, a series that is part of the podcast straight white American Jesus, my name is Dan Miller, Professor of Religion and Social Thought at Lamar College. Please to be with you as always and as always want to say thank you for listening, thank you for tuning in, thank you for supporting the things we do, it's straight white American Jesus. We can't do it without you and as always inviting your thoughts, feedback, comments, ideas for upcoming series and topics in this series that you can reach me Daniel Miller, swadge, Daniel Miller, SWAJ at gmail.com. That's the way to reach me. I also haunt the discord that

1:04subscribers can access and so on. And as I've been saying, working up a series on questions, I was not supposed to ask in church or questions I wasn't allowed to ask in church. Maybe if you were a church goer or spent time in that world, the questions that got you in trouble, the questions that I don't know got you labeled as somebody or friends weren't supposed to hang out with, the questions that upset your pastor got you sent to the proverbial corner. What have you? Send those to me. I want to hear them. I want to put that together. Put it in your header, questions I wasn't supposed to ask or something like that. And I look forward to exploring those with you. In the meantime, I want to continue on here. We are continuing our our ride or our forced march, I guess, maybe through Josh Holley's book manhood. We continue exploring his vision of as the subtitle suggests the masculine virtues America needs. That is Josh Holley's vision of how we will save America by cultivating the proper masculine virtues. And again, we're not reading

2:05Holley because he's Josh Holley or because he's otherwise like special or notable in some way. We're reading him because his account of masculinity opens such a window into the reasoning of the contemporary MAGA aligned right in so many different social and religious domains. And we're continuing on or in the seventh chapter of the book for those who are keeping score. We've made it that far. The seventh chapter of the book in which Holley presents the third of the distinctly masculine roles he believes men are called to play. In other words, the latter portion of his book are a series of like roles that he thinks men are called to play where they exercise these distinctly masculine virtues that will save America and so forth. And we are on the role of warrior the third of these. And we've already looked at this role some. We've seen that Holley plays fast and loose in telling us exactly what the so-called warrior virtues that men are supposed to cultivate are when he wants to rail against liberals or progressives or what he calls the modern Epicurians. Those virtues sound really militant and violent.

3:10In other moments, they apparently include things like ambition and drive. We talked about that before and leadership, which exactly no one opposes. I don't know anybody who's like, yeah, leadership's a terrible virtue. We should be opposed to it. So he's slippery in those things. We've also seen that when he reaches for a biblical model of the warrior man. And remember, Holley is a biblical assist. He wants to be basing this in the Bible. He wants to be claiming that what he's saying is a biblical model, a Christian model. He is a Christian nationalist, self-evowed and open about it. He believes that America is a Christian nation. He believes that an embrace of America's Christian identity can save us. So this is supposed to be a distinctly Christian vision of masculinity. So when he looks to the Bible for his exemplar, he looks to the figure of Joshua who was tasked with conquering the so-called promised land. And here the masculine virtues are apparently strength encouraged. Joshua is told multiple times in the text to be strong and courageous and so strength encouraged are the virtues. Again, despite what Holley says,

4:13I don't think I know anybody who's like strength and courage are inherently negative traits or anything like that. And they're also certainly not obviously masculine in character. I don't know what it is about, you know, being a guy that supposedly would make it so you can exercise strength or courage and the people who don't identify as male couldn't. But there we are. We talked about that and we also talked about the fact and this was the real focus last time that Joshua is a hard choice to live with since his warrior calling involves undertaking divinely sanctioned genocide against those peoples who already live in the so-called promised land by the time in the biblical text that the Israelites are coming back to the promised land to quote unquote reclaim it. It's not sitting empty. There are our whole civilizations there and the idea is that they have to be wiped out and early destroyed and so forth. And we saw that Holley doesn't actually acknowledge or deal with that issue. It's an obvious problem with the book of Joshua. And if somebody's not predisposed to just kind of give the Bible a pass or to assume that the Bible is a morally good book,

5:18if somebody reads it and they read all of these commands to utterly destroy everybody lives there, it's an obvious problem. Holley just doesn't talk about it. He just doesn't deal with it. He just kind of pretends it's not there. Okay. So today, sort of carrying all of that forward. And this is our last chapter where we're talking about his warrior vision. Today, we're going to take a closer look at what he actually does with these seemingly convoluted ingredients of a men's warrior task. How do they all finally come together? Okay. And for me, this carries through from the last episode, because there's still this ongoing question of what do you do? If you're going to point to Joshua, as your exemplar, what do you do about the little issue of genocide? There's the little tiny teeny, teeny problem that God commands genocide through Joshua. That was the title of last episode, genocide Joshua. And we're going to see how Holley, in my mind, how he tries to take the offensive in the morally problematic elements of his appeal to Joshua out of the account of masculinity. We

6:20already saw this that he he doesn't deal with it explicitly. He doesn't say, oh, here are some problems with Joshua. People read it this way. Here's how he responds. He doesn't mention them at all. But what we're going to see here is another strategy that he uses that runs through this. And so what we ultimately get in this last part of the chapter on warriors is exactly the kind of lame evangelical sermon that those of us who grew up in this tradition have heard a thousand times. We get a really crappy, here's how this applies to your life, kind of message from Josh and that's what I want to talk about today. So let's start with this. Those who have listened to me talk about how conservative Christians actually use the Bible. And I know this is a thing I talk about a lot, but you cannot talk to people who claim a conservative Christian identity for very long before they are going to claim biblical authority. They are going to tell you that what they hold is what they hold because the Bible teaches it and that it should be accepted because the Bible is

7:21the word of God and so forth. And so I talk about this a lot. And people know that I say all the time if you listen to me to conservative Christians are not actually biblical literalists. Why does that matter? It's because they will often say I read the Bible literally. I'm a biblical literal. So be a point of pride. The Bible is literally true. And it's also an issue that gets picked up by other regular people commentators on evangelicalism and other forms of conservative Protestantism will often describe quote unquote biblical literalism as a defining feature. Scholars of religion will do this. They'll talk about biblical literalism. And I have said multiple times that they're actually not biblical literalists that I've said that there's no such thing as a biblical literalist. They might claim to be they might believe that they are really go to bed at night putting their head down on their pillow feeling confident that they are biblical literalists and that the reason why they believe what they believe is because the Bible tells them to and so on. But they aren't. They are not really biblical literalists. And when I have discussions with people they're often

8:23surprised when I make this claim. Certainly other religion scholars I've discussed it with them and they're like why do you say that? That seems like a strange thing we'll get and you know we'll get down in the nuts and bolts of it. Definitely people are still conservative Christians. I've had more conversations than I can count with conservative Christians who consider themselves literalists trying to show them that they're actually not and sort of laying little traps and things to catch them in the fact that they're not actually literalists. But also people who've undergone you know what we refer to as faith deconstruction or they've left that kind of religious subculture behind. And they will say I grew up I was a biblical literalist I grew up in a church that believed the thought that the Bible was literally true the way I used to read the Bible was literally and so forth. And so even though they don't think that now that's still how they understand their former position and I cannot hear and I'm not interested in fully developing why it is that I say that there's no such thing as a biblical literalist but I can show you an example because in this chapter Holly gives us a great example of exactly why I say that and what I mean

9:26and in giving that example he shows us the other way that he's going to try to sidestep that whole messy like what about the fact that Joshua was commanded to commit genocide sort of issue okay. So here I want us to listen to how Josh Holly gives his summation he's an attorney this is his summation this is his kind of summary or kind of closing argument on some of the stuff he's been saying about Joshua I want to listen how he sums it up the account of Joshua taking the promise and his transition that is Holly's transition our Joshua's transition to how this should inform our understanding of masculinity and masculine virtue so here's here's what he has to say those who want to do a read along I'm on page 117 again I'm reading this book so you don't have to but you know if you're a glutton for punishment and you want to read it it's page 117 so this is how he sums it up he says this is no ordinary piece of land where Joshua is God is going to do something

10:27special with this ground this is to be the site of a new Eden and Joshua has a role to play his task is to redeem it clear it I was going to pause so where he leaves out the whole clearing it thing he's supposed to clear it by like genocidal he wiping out everybody who's there whatever doesn't say it his task is to redeem it clear it for God's purposes to be accomplished Joshua must rid the land of the giants and the monsters that are taking control he must break a path for the light again I just I can't resist he has to clear the end of the giants and monsters last time I said these are actual people and yes the text sometimes uses that kind of language but Holly dehumanizes them by sort of picking up on this theme of giants and monsters as if as if Joshua's out fighting mythological creatures or something and not commanded to wipe out other people okay anyway this is what he says that's his summation God is going to do something amazing and transformative through Joshua as he goes into the promised land and he wipes everybody out and then listen to the next line the same is true for us in our lives there's the transition

11:36and I want to pause for a minute and I want to I want us to think I want us to catch how this transition is supposed to work for us as we read this God's going to do something great through Joshua's going to take the land and wipe everybody out and the same is true for us in our lives okay it works pretty much the way that my phone feed does people who know me know that I like analogies and metaphors of my own so here's one and I promise I'm going to circle back around I'm going to land this plant okay so just stick with me it works the same way my phone feed does about a year and a half ago I started working out again I'm a middle-aged guy and I'm like I need to start getting in better shape and heart things are real and blood pressure things are real and glucose level things are real all the stuff all the stuff you don't need to worry about that but I started working out again and as a middle-aged guy whose body doesn't work like it did when I was in my 20s or even my 30s I'd look stuff up about working out of middle-aged like things

12:38that you should do or shouldn't do or recommended things or you know whatever whatever and of course in looking that up the algorithm got me so now I and I'm sure a lot of you were in the same boat I get all kinds of ridiculous unsolicited workout stuff in my phone feed like I do the same thing a lot of other people do that you're not supposed to do for sleep hygiene and all that but some way there before I go to sleep I'll scroll through my phone and I get all kinds of weird workout stuff and a lot of them work like this they work by highlighting somebody with a superhuman physique or superhuman physical prowess some athletes or I don't know maybe an influencer or a well-known celebrity or whomever and they tell me that if I workout like them if I adopt their workouts I can do it too so you get the one that's like you know something like here's Jason Memoa's secret secret biceps workout or check out Travis Henry's monster leg day for real

13:38results or here's the old school workout that Arnold used in his heyday or whatever and the idea is it worked for them it'll work for you and I know again like most of you also know with the stuff that comes along your your phone feed this is pure bullshit it's pure bullshit no matter how much I try to adopt the work I don't I don't I know this is bullshit I don't try to do this but if I were to go look oh Arnold used to do this or Jason Memoa does that or John Cena does this or I don't know Dwayne Johnson does whatever I can go and do their workout all I want assuming it doesn't kill me and I'm still gonna be me when I look in the mirror it's gonna be middle-aged Dan Miller looking back maybe I'll be a little leaner maybe I'll be a little fitter maybe I'll be a little stronger I'm not gonna be Jason Memoa I'm not gonna be Dwayne Johnson I'm not gonna be John Cena or Travis Henry or whomever else it's not gonna be me

14:39nope not gonna do it this is how Holly's message works here and it's it's completely typical of evangelical preachers it's exactly what he does God did all this amazing stuff in Joshua's life yeah he's gonna read the land of giants and monsters and taking control is gonna make it holy land and he can do the same for you it's the same thing God did amazing things for Joshua and he promises this for you too and and this this is this is like I say that Josh Holly is typical here he is typical of God I can't even tell you how many lame ass sermons I have sat through with some pastor who does the same thing some Bible passage you're just waiting for you're waiting for the flip of like and you can do it too kind of thing it's everybody's predictable and everybody's lame and everybody's bullshit as the stuff that comes through in your phone feed and that's what Josh Holly's feeding us here and here's what I think I think that Josh and I think every evangelical

15:41preacher deep down they also know that it's bullshit they know this and here's what they know Josh Holly knows full well that the story of Joshua is absolutely irrelevant to virtually all of us maybe there'll be some small subset of people who are going to be real quote unquote warriors maybe they'll be in the military or something okay still a hell of a difference between being in today's military and being in the military thousands of years ago in the ancient Near East and so forth okay maybe some of us might at some point in our lives be called upon to exercise violence or force in defense of ourselves or someone else that could happen okay but those cases really they're few and far between and they are far from the kind of calling to literal holy war the features in the story of Joshua I'm very aware that there are lots of mage of people who want America's army to be a crusader army and who view everything that goes on as an American holy war or whatever but it's not okay setting them aside it's it's this that the point is if we're

16:46looking for a direct application and relevance of the story of Joshua it lands on almost none of us just like those things the pop up in my feed the promise the the promise that the same is true for us in our lives is pure nonsense the same is true for us in our lives exactly what Josh Holly says is pure nonsense what does that mean here's what it means here's why this matters the Joshua story taken literally is absolutely irrelevant for almost all of us almost all the time it has no direct relevance in most of our lives for some of us never most of us almost never so what does Josh do well he's going to make the story relevant I just said it's irrelevant he's going to make the story relevant but the way he's going to do it is by not taking it literally he is going to turn it into a metaphor he is going to extend it metaphorically and again this is

17:49typical this is what all those conservative Christian preachers do meanwhile they're all standing out there talking about taking the Bible literally but in their actual preaching and teaching what they do is precisely not to take the Bible literally they have to turn it into a metaphor so that it has some relevance and connection to regular people so I want to read his sentence again but I was tricky I only read the first part of the sentence I want to read the second part of the sentence here's what he says he says the same is true for us in our lives and above all in our characters wait what true in our lives but in our in our relates to our character it's a metaphor it's a metaphor for for our character he turns the whole story of Joshua into a metaphor here's what he says here's the next paragraph after the paragraph all the big things God's doing for this is where that sentence starts here's what he says he says the same is

18:50true for us in our lives and above all in our characters Joshua's story is not just about Canaan Canaan is a place but it represents more than land what's it Canaan is a metaphor guys it's not really a literal place it stands for the whole of the earth and for our lives as well God has made the world to be holy he has made our lives to be holy and the two go together in the story Canaan is overrun with wild beasts and enemies but our souls can be like that to clear the ground of our lives for a garden we must break new paths of character the path to the world's renewal runs through our souls it's touching turns out it's not really a story about a place doesn't really matter if it happened historically or whatever all those claims to literality they don't matter it's a story about our lives and our souls and our character

19:51what what Holly does our friend Josh what he does is he metaphorically shifts the story to being one about our personal inner and sometimes to some extent interpersonal lives but he makes it a story about us as individuals it's about our inner lives and our inner struggle and our development of character it's not actually about a promised land or fighting real enemies are doing literal warrior stuff it's about our internal battle so a few pages later I promise I'm not I'm not gonna read from the book in you know in detail anymore well I'm not gonna do it in this episode can't promise in the future a few pages later he's got a whole section about how our canon is pride oh my god this this is the the cheesy sermon move Joshua's canon was a place but each of us have our own canon to face up to each of us has a canon for all of you in the congregation today what is your canon what is your promised land that is overrun by beasts and

20:53enemies that's what he's doing he says our canon is pride our battle is an internal battle not to be prideful and then after that the next section he tells us that our task is to develop love and hope okay love and hope now sort of interestingly this is I I could do so many episodes on every chapter of this he uses an example and then here's an example in this chapter is protesters in Hong Kong protesting Chinese policy how brave they are and how they're showing like love and hope for society and whatever but this from a guy who like if you were to ask about I don't know protesters in Minnesota protesting ice actions he would tell you that they're lawless and they're evil and that they're not law abiding and so forth so it's just a just an aside when they're protesting something he supports it's an expression of love and hope but it's something he doesn't support their law breakers but our task is to develop love and hope and then summing it all up he says that quote courage and love and hope are the inner masculine virtues we need to develop he talked

22:01about pride it's funny he's like pride is the source of everything he just this kind of basic Augustinian notion that pride is the source of said and whatever and he says that but then like when he's listing the virtues once again humility disappears like there's no reference to pride even though he said that's the big thing but the point is he said these are these inner masculine virtues courage and love and hope and he makes the metaphorical extension clear so he's summing up the story at the end of Joshua's life and he says this he's talking about Joshua the end of his life he has quote martial the armies of Israel he has led them into war he has driven back the enemy from the promised land okay and then on the next page he starts to shift and he says Joshua was was transformed by these events says he confronted his giants and he grew as a person the Bible doesn't say that the Bible does not talk about Joshua confronting his inner demons or his inner giants doesn't say Joshua grew and developed as a person doesn't say that and then we get the extended metaphor and then he says the same is true for us all

23:09we are called to and can confront the giants and the beasts within ourselves and we too can be transformed okay dude do we see what's happening here Holly isn't appealing to the Bible as literally true he's got the whole story of Joshua but it turns out that the story of Joshua's not actually about anything that Joshua did it's all just a big metaphor for us to like focus on our inner selves to be the best people we can be he's turning the Joshua's story into a metaphor that is relevant for all of us and this is how conservative Christians actually use the Bible no matter what they say there's nothing remotely literalist here and this is just a prime example when somebody says why do you say they don't read the Bible literally here it is it's not unique to Josh Holly again it is typical of every crappy evangelical sermon you'll ever hear if you grew up in those churches you knew it I can't tell you even as an evangelical sick and tired I got of like the same sermon every time about like you can do it too

24:09I mean Josh Holly here he's just following the preaching paradigm that is taught to conservative Christians every conservative Christian he goes to seminary and takes a preaching class is taught about how you you have to have the application section how are we going to apply it to our lives it's where you turn into a big metaphor so the literally it doesn't have any relevance so taken in a literal sense the vast majority of biblical texts they're almost completely irrelevant they have no direct application of people's lives that to be metaphorically extended like this so Josh Holly gives us a literal textbook example of why it is that I say conservative Christians don't read the Bible literally and he certainly isn't okay so Josh Holly doesn't actually read the Bible literally neither do other conservative Christians but so what why am I talking about this what does that have to do with masculinity and masculine virtues and his specific point for me there are a few relevant takeaways that this illustrates for us the first is this

25:09it's what I and this is not I didn't invent this language other people will talk about this it's what we can call the sort of therapeutic turn that defines a lot of contemporary popular conservative Christian teaching you listen to all that language there about confronting pride and fighting our own inner demons and being hopeful and whatever what what Holly actually offers it's just like it's just a kind of basic self-help motivational guide with a veneer of Christian teaching slapped on top and scholars of religion and popular culture or people who study like religion and media and fields like that they've noted this general therapeutic shift for decades that this is like conservative Christians when they talk about these notions of like why you should believe these things and what the Bible means or whatever it's just this sort of therapeutic self-helpy kind of language so in suggesting that the the warrior virtues that was the focus that was the focus of the chapter we got to be warriors that this warrior ethos as P.

26:13might call it that this warrior ethos is it's really to master ourselves and be better people Holly and Holly's Bible it isn't telling us anything we couldn't find on the self-help shelves of any bookstore anywhere he's not giving us anything here that you couldn't find in a lot of other sources the second point is that by metaphorically extending the warrior motif he actually undercuts it he goes from suggesting that men should be aggressive and tough and even violent fighting for what's right to the really basic and pretty mundane teaching that we need to work to make ourselves better people thanks Josh and it wasn't me to be a warrior man tell me that sounds awesome Josh I'm in I'm going home I'm pumped my algorithm says I can do it Josh teach me how to be a warrior Josh well you got to be less prideful and work on love and hope and oh yeah be brave and courageous and like driven ambitious okay

27:15the the the model of warrior masculinity but it doesn't seem very different at all from the kind of liberal or progressive or epicurean ideas of masculinity mocks if you know you get the liberals of progressives would be like well yeah let's just be guys who like maybe aren't assholes all the time and aren't violent and aren't aggressive and aren't domineering it's kind of what he's saying his warriors humble and loving and exercises hopeful courageous brave attributes it's a list of virtues I don't think anyone would oppose considered any abstract which means and this is the kind of the final point that at the end of this chapter like we've been waiting and waiting and waiting and tell me Josh show me what the warrior is Josh these are the let's again the masculine virtues that American needs these are the masculine virtues that will save America these are the roles that men can play that will turn America back into what it needs to be that will make America great again day it turns out that they're they're

28:16not very Christian and there's nothing specifically Christian about this that's the therapeutic piece like he could come to this from any number of directions and they don't really have much to do with being a warrior not in any straightforward sense and that's what happens when you metaphorically extend something you kind of undercut its literal meaning and that's what he's doing which brings up the next issue this is an issue we've seen over and over and over in his book they don't seem to be specifically masculine either are people who aren't men not supposed to to master their pride should they not be loving should they not be hopeful should they not be courageous should they not be brave should they not be ambitious like like what is distinctly masculine about this he can't answer that question so at the end of the day when you boil it all down this chapter like most of his book it says nothing of substance about masculinity but manages to use a lot of words doing it you cut through all the words and the verbiage and his folksy stories and whatever and

29:18you find there's just there's no there there we might say so this is the question as we finish this chapter that leaves us with is what specifically does this give us with the idea of men as warriors well on one hand if you cut through the rhetoric and the polemics all the places where he's attacking the liberals and the elites and the new the new epicureans and all of that you cut through all of that he doesn't have really anything of interest to say and in fact he says a lot of stuff that his supposed opponents wouldn't probably mind he has nothing to say about distinctly masculine virtues or the concept of masculinity itself which means he really has nothing to say about the loss of those either in other words if he can't really tell us what masculinity is or a masculine virtues are he can't really tell us how it matters if masculinity is somehow lost or attacked he is giving us an answer of like the kinds of people we should be and maybe what good Americans should be but the masculinity pieces just falling away but here's the other piece of

30:23this the other side you cut through all the polemics it turns out there's no there there but that's the point the point of this book is not really masculinity it's not masculine virtue the point of this book is the polemics it is the argument it is the attack the point of this book it's not really about defending masculinity against his detractors or empowering men within a society that is disempower them or whatever that's not really the point about halfway through his book that's about where we are I think I'm eyeballing it we're like halfway through his book he still hasn't actually said anything unique about men or masculinity but I'm arguing that's not really his point the point of the book is to attack anyone who is not like him it is to attack anyone who is not maga aligned it is to attack anyone who's not a Christian nationalist it is to attack anyone who doesn't accept his patriarchal vision of society it is to attack anyone who doesn't accept his theocratic understanding of us law in us policy

31:29it's to attack anyone who affirms the LGBTQ community and on and on and on we could expand that list that is the point when we boil down the message and find that there's nothing of substance underneath the polemics that tells us that the aplimp the polemics the attacks the culture war the character assassination that is the point it is a feature of the argument not a bug all the rest is misdirection and I think that's the temptation that's what's easy to miss when we read or engage with people like Josh Holly as we come to that point of recognizing that that there's no real argument there and we say ah that's what does nothing there no reason to engage in no reason to look at it what we miss is that it's not really about the argument it's just an attack it's an attack on anybody Josh Holly doesn't think is a real American or a real Christian and those are the same thing for him all right we're going to line that up we're going into chapter eight

32:33next time the next role that men are called to play they are called to be are you ready for it builders the man is called to be a builder I have a hunch that I know exactly exactly sorry I got I got distracted by the first sentence in the in the chapter there I have a hunch I know exactly what biblical character he's going to look at if you know how these kind of things work I think you probably know the biblical text it's going to come along as well we'll start diving into that next episode in the meantime as always thank you for listening if you're a subscriber thank you for helping us do the things that we do if you're if you tune into our live events if you come to the office hours if you do those things thank you we can't do it without you if you're sending me feedback on these episodes in the series and ideas for topics and all of that please keep those coming Daniel Miller swag Daniel Miller SW AJ at gmail.com this series more than anything we do is driven by you and I need you to keep it going so thank you if you're not a subscriber and that's something you would be in a position to consider doing we'd ask you to do that we we do a lot we

33:35put out a lot of content we're putting out more all the time stepping up what we do you help us to do that if you can support us at the one time gift thank you if you can just continue liking us and passing the word around and making sure people know about us help us in all the ways you can we appreciate it so much to help us keep doing what we're doing and as I say and I always always mean it so much please be well until we have a chance to talk again