Talking About God in Public

Some fragmented thoughts on an ecumenical workshop at Princeton Seminary, dastardly potato beetles, tomato season, and a profile of Clarence Thomas

Saturday, August 13
Grand Rapids, Mich.

Greetings, friendly reader.

How do we talk about God in public?

Last week, I went back to Princeton to explore this question with a group of theologians, content creators, and congregational leaders. We had been gathered by the seminary’s Institute for Youth Ministry, and one thing that made the meeting especially compelling to me was that the attendees weren’t only Christians.

How do we talk together about God when we have divergent views of who God is and whether God even exists?

This whole group-talking thing, of course, is not really my jam. Most of you know that I’m a shy introvert. I find big groups of people intimidating. I’d much rather sit with someone in one-on-one conversation, or maybe at a table for four, than in a room of thirty. I’m also socially awkward. When we were asked to go around the circle, introduce ourselves, and say why we’d accepted the invitation to come, I was honest: I’d been inclined to say no, until I realized that the invitation came with a free plane ticket to Princeton, where I could see some of my dear seminary friends. “I guess,” I said, “I’m kind of a cheap date.” (Cue nervous laughter around the room.)

The gathering was largely curated by the three facilitators, Casper ter Kuile, Angie Thurston, and Sue Phillips, who lead an outfit called the Sacred Design Lab. Ter Kuile and Thurston, who both graduated from Harvard Divinity School, gained prominence for a 2015 paper called “How We Gather,” in which they explored how millennials are finding spiritual meaning in secular spaces—Crossfit gyms and SoulCycle classes, adult summer camps and dinner parties. 

For a meeting at Princeton Seminary, this gathering was unusually diverse: It included a couple of Jewish thinkers as well as several people who identify as non-theistic or agnostic. In our first few minutes, one facilitator named the fact that we were a majority-Christian group sitting within the walls of a Christian institution. She invited us to be thoughtful and sensitive to that reality. But quickly it became clear that many Christians have little experience in cross-cultural conversation. For instance, we often pepper our talk with culturally specific jargon, jokes, and abbreviations unfamiliar to outsiders. A passing reference to VBS might open a door to shared experience or profound childhood memories for other Christians. But its opacity to a non-Christian who doesn’t know that VBS stands for “vacation Bible school” can add another brick to an interreligious wall, hindering understanding.

The attendees at the IYM/Sacred Design Lab workshop

How do we talk about God together when our cultures, our experiences, and our vocabularies are so different?

With empathy and care. To foster communication—in an ecumenical context especially, but perhaps in any diverse setting—requires us to slow down, to consider our words before we broadcast them, and to think not just about what we want to say but also about how it might be heard and whether it can be understood.

To communicate clearly isn’t just hospitality either. It’s also an expression of one’s theology. I subscribe to the notion that we are all theologians, whether we study and talk about God for a paycheck or not. You might be uncomfortable with the idea that you are a theologian. Yet I’ve never encountered a single person who has not asked, whether aloud or in the hidden spaces of one’s heart, whether there is more to life than one’s own needs and desires. What matters? Whom or what do I honor—worship, even—through my words and deeds? What is love?

We theologize every time we ask whether there is something or someone beyond us. We theologize when we proclaim, through our actions as well as our words, what we believe and what we want to believe. We theologize when we’re kind to our neighbors and when we’re rude. Greed and generosity, attentiveness and apathy, indifference and love—these are all deeply theological, because they say something not just about what we value but also about what or whom we serve.

During our three days together, it became clear to me that simply gathering as we did was a countercultural choice. We entered into an experience that promised no clear payoff, no apparent prestige, no obvious monetization opportunities. Nobody live-tweeted the event. People chose to be vulnerable with their stories—and the beauty and grace with which those stories were received was remarkable. Though some attendees had PhDs while others had only a high-school diploma, there was never any sense of hierarchy, never any notion that those with more years of education had more to offer. We built some trust, but only because the folks in the room dared to risk being known and worked hard to listen.

To talk about God in public, whether you’re a preacher or a TikTok influencer, an academic or a normal human having a conversation with a friend, can be scary. You might aim for sensible candor and wise vulnerability, but there’s always the danger of oversharing. You might hope for solidarity or at least legibility. Often, though, that hope can be clouded by fear of alienation or even judgment. I have certainly wrestled with deep loneliness in my work.

To encounter a gathering in which grace abounds is such a rare gift. Reformed types like me might talk about grace all the time but we’re less deft at extending that kind of generous welcome. To experience it in an ecumenical environment was such a wonderful surprise. And it only made me long for more of it in the rest of my life. What if we had more places where uncertainty weren’t seen as a liability? Spaces in which honest inquiry were more respected than hot takes? Settings where the impulse to judge somehow were secondary to the desire to understand?

I don’t know what the other attendees gleaned from our brief meeting. But what I took away was a deepened sense of appreciation—you might even call it awe—for the beautiful diversity of how we seek meaning and purpose in this life.

One night at dinner, I delighted in a wide-ranging conversation with the Jewish theologian Jesse Noily that veered from his childhood experiences of Jerusalem to how he wrestles with innovation in a religious context that places a premium on precedent and tradition. Another night, I got to hear from Angie Thurston about her work on forgiveness—a timely, important, and often-misunderstood topic and practice. LT Yenn-Batah, an American Baptist pastor who leads a congregation in New Jersey, blessed me with a reminder that a preacher is never just a voice; it comes embodied, and in her case, as a Black woman, that embodiment often encounters the prejudices of those who hear her voice. Angel Collinson, a former professional skier who’s now sailing around the world with her partner, was a Johnny Appleseed of wonder; with every sentence she spoke, she scattered invitations to rejoice in the beauty all around us as well as within. Sam Han, an art director at Alabaster and a skilled photographer, summoned me—and all of us—repeatedly back to the gifts of artistic expression. And Amichai Lau-Lavie offered me the gift of solidarity; as a gay man from a prominent Orthodox family in Israel, he overcame great obstacles in his journey to the rabbinate, and the creativity and imagination with which he now ministers in New York City encourages me as I continue on my own unusual path.

How I wish there were more spaces like that one. Yet I have to name that it took significant resources. A grant from the Lilly Endowment paid for us to get there and kept us well-fed for the duration. The folks from the Sacred Design Lab and the Institute for Youth Ministry invested countless hours of planning and preparation. Each person also had to carve three days out from the rest of their lives—and not everyone has the time and the flexibility to do that.

I suppose it doesn’t cost much beyond desire and intention, though, to cultivate the virtues that I found in abundance at this gathering: Mutual respect. Humility. Curiosity. Put it all together, and you might even call it love.

How do we talk about God in public? 

Sometimes just by walking back that instinctive “no” and offering up a tentative “yes.”
Sometimes just by showing up and listening.
Sometimes just by paying attention.
Sometimes just by saying, “Tell me more.”

Anyway, after three days, this shy introvert was pretty much out of words. But I was also filled with gratitude, especially for the reminder that, as one of my fellow attendees noted, “humanity kind of sucks but humans can be awesome.” I’d like to think that I’m a better theologian because of it. A better person too.

What I’m Growing: The leaves of the potato plants in our yard have begun to wither, a sign that we’re probably a month or so from harvest. We should get a decent crop this year, and it should be a good mix—the versatile Kennebec, gorgeous Adirondack Blues, Russian Banana Fingerlings that should be excellent roasted or in potato salad. I confess, though, that I’ve been neglecting the potato plants in the community garden. A couple of months ago, Colorado potato beetles began showing up in large numbers. A plant that was lush and green one day would be completely defoliated the next. I’d try my best to kill a few beetles whenever I had time. But my short spells in the garden barely interrupted their round-the-clock buffet. Eventually, I just surrendered that area to the bugs and the weeds. On Thursday, though, I had some time and some angst, which I channeled it into weeding. And as I tore out the ragweed, the foxtail, and the ground ivy, I noticed that a few of the potato plants—no more than half a dozen—have begun to come back, and there’s no sign of beetles now. I have no idea whether these plants will manage to flower or bear any healthy tubers. Still, their perseverance and their resilience impresses me.

What I’m Cooking: Our tomato plants have been bearing so much fruit, so we’re in the midst of a culinary tomato festival at our dining-room table. The other day, our friend Damian was passing through Grand Rapids on his way home to New Jersey, so we invited him to stop in for lunch. One of the dishes I made was a farro salad. Trader Joe’s sells farro that cooks in just about 10 minutes—super-easy. I sautéed diced red pepper, oyster mushroom, and zucchini, and then let that cool before tossing it with the farro. Then I halved some of our cherry tomatoes—Sun Golds, SuperSweet 100s, Sunrise Bumblebees—and added those, as well as a generous handful of crumbled goat cheese and a couple hearty glugs of olive oil, some fresh basil, and plenty of salt and pepper. With the larger tomatoes—a brilliantly orange one called Valencia, a fat one called Cherokee Purple—I made the grilled peach and tomato salad I’ve written about before. I grilled a small steak and topped it with some pesto. And I quickly sautéed some julienned chard with some white beans. It was a lovely summer lunch.

What I’m Reading: Clarence Thomas is one of the most powerful, mystifying figures in the United States today. This exploration of his roots told me so much that I didn’t know about his background—that he grew up speaking not English but the patois of the Gullah/Geechee people; that he abandoned plans to attend seminary; that his beloved grandfather never forgave him for changing his plans to serve the church. The piece is by Mitchell S. Jackson, a Pulitzer-winning essayist, novelist, and professor who, as a Black man, seeks to understand why Thomas is who he is. It’s always tricky to parse another person’s story and emerge with anything conclusive about their inner life. Yet Jackson makes his noble attempt, I think, with the necessary humility and leaves room for what we can’t know. Though it didn’t leave me any more sympathetic to Thomas’s far-reaching actions from the bench, it did grow my compassion for the man and his journey.

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If you have thoughts on what it means to you to talk about God in public—or even what that phrase stirs up in you, whether it’s trepidation or joy—I’d love to know. Also, how is your garden looking? What has succeeded and what has failed? And what are you cooking on these long summer days?

That’s all for this week. As always, I’m so glad we can stumble through all this together, and I’ll try to write again soon.

Yours,
Jeff