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Dr. Preston Sprinkle (Ph.D.) joins today’s episode to speak with Tim and Rick on the work he's doing to help foster civil, thoughtful, and faithful disagreements on contentious issues. Preston unpacks some of the motivations with his wildly popular Theology in the Raw podcast, and they also discuss the Theology in the Raw conference - an annual conference where people of differing views come together for 3 days to speak with one another on some of the more polarizing topics affecting the church today.

Transcript

Rick Langer: Welcome to the Winsome Conviction Podcast. My name's Rick Langer and I'm a professor at Biola and also the director, co-director with my good friend Tim Muehlhoff of the Winsome Conviction Project. And we are thrilled to have you joining us today for our podcast. Thanks, Tim for having me come join you too.

Tim Muehlhoff: Rick, it's great to be here as always, and I'm just going to let you know right now I'm breaking podcast protocol. I'm doing it, Rick.

Rick Langer: How are you doing that? Please tell me, Tim.

Tim Muehlhoff: We do not know when this is going to be aired, but I'm stating right now, as of right now, I am wearing my favorite Christmas present. It is a Detroit Lions hooded sweatshirt. We are 15 and two. We have a buy to start the playoffs, and many people have picked us not only to get to the Super Bowl, but by golly, to win the Super Bowl. And I'm wearing it proudly, and who knows when this will air. Maybe we just got upset and that'll be the end times. You are wearing some swag, my friend.

Rick Langer: Well, I just want to pause here for a moment and help me understand how it is that you talking about your favorite sports team that's breaking podcast protocol.

Tim Muehlhoff: Because we don't know when this is going to air. This may air a long time, but as of right now, we're 15 and two and you're wearing the Broncos.

Rick Langer: I am wearing my Bronco outfit-

Tim Muehlhoff: Which is awesome. And you're going to-

Rick Langer: Because after eight years without the playoffs, we're there.

Tim Muehlhoff: Stop it. I hate that kind of talk. Eight years. You know how long it's been since we've been to Super Bowl?

Rick Langer: Yeah. I know.

Tim Muehlhoff: Stop it. We have never been to a Super Bowl.

Rick Langer: So Tim, could you stop whining and give us an introduction to who our special guest is today?

Tim Muehlhoff: Now, the reason I felt the freedom to do this is because we have a friend on the podcast. This was a person, linguistic scholar who had won the Nobel Prize. I might've refrained, but it's not. It's our friend Preston Sprinkle-

Preston Sprinkle: It's just me.

Tim Muehlhoff: It's just Preston.

Rick Langer: It's just Preston Sprinkle. Okay.

Tim Muehlhoff: No, stop. Preston's pretty impressive. Let me read you his bio. Dr. Preston Sprinkle is a biblical scholar, speaker, podcaster, a New York Times bestselling author. This is actually a deep part of me that just ticks me off and is the co-founder and president of the Center for Faith, Sexuality and Gender. He earned a PhD in New Testament from Aberdeen University in Scotland. He's an international speaker, New York Times bestselling author. He's written books like, Does the Bible Support Same-Sex Marriage, most recent book, Exiles: The Church in the Shadow of an Empire. He's currently the president in the Center for Faith in Sexuality and Gender. He has a theology in the Raw podcast and Exiles in Babylon conference we're going to talk about. But I thought the best part of your bio, at least the one that I read, is that when he wants to grow up, Preston's dream is to move to a tropical island and become a professional surfer.

Preston Sprinkle: That dream may not materialize anytime soon. Yeah.

Tim Muehlhoff: But Preston, welcome to the podcast.

Preston Sprinkle: Thank you for having me back on the show. I really appreciate it.

Tim Muehlhoff: I will say that when we first started this thing, you were so gracious to be a guest and to date your episode on how do you love the trans community? LGBTQ community is the most listened to interview we've ever done in our entire life of the Winsome Conviction podcast.

Preston Sprinkle: Wow.

Tim Muehlhoff: Obviously you're resonating with people. Obviously this is a topic people want to talk about. We want to talk about something you've done called, The Theology in the Raw Conference, but before we even get to that, it's kind of based on this idea of an exile. This is a metaphor that has really resonated with you. Could you explain why that resonates with you and how that shapes your thinking about ministry?

Preston Sprinkle: Yeah. I mean, obviously it's rooted in the literal exile of the Old Testament, but after that exile in what, 586 BC in the middle of the Old Testament, Israel's exiled to Babylon. When they return, there's still this sense that there's still in this kind of theological political exile that really runs all the way into the New Testament. And you see it in explicit places like one Peter addresses his audience as living as sojourners and exiles, but that theme, it underlies so much of how the New Testament views its own political identity in relation to the Roman Empire. You see it especially in the book of Revelation where you see this almost this battle between the Kingdom of God and Babylon, the Roman Empire. And so yeah, all that to say, I think that that's a really helpful lens to view our own modern day political identity as citizens of God's global multi-ethnic kingdom. When we put our identity in that kingdom first, that just tweaks or reshapes how we view our political allegiances to our modern day political systems.

Tim Muehlhoff: And maybe even expectations. In private conversations, you often say, "Listen, we're in Babylon. What are we overly surprised about?"

Preston Sprinkle: One of the most controversial things I've said on Twitter, which is really weird, was I think it was the night before the 2020 election, and I said something that was the most theologically, the most vanilla thing you could possibly say. I said, "Tomorrow, Babylon is going to elect a new leader. Let's pray for that leader." That's it. And people flipped out, like, what are you... But that perspective is like this, I'm a good citizen. I pay my taxes. I try to obey the laws best I can, so I'm a good, I don't sleep with people's wives. I am not killing people. I'm a really good citizen. I'm not a drug dealer. I'm a good citizen of Babylon, but it's still Babylon. My primary identity is elsewhere. So my allegiance is to the kingdom of God.

Rick Langer: What impact does a failure to have an imagination that have on what we want of our government, what we are thinking we should get, what we get offended if it doesn't do it, how does it affect the way the church's voice comes out? And I guess maybe some of this is even our own emotional passions because of what we think we should be, should be getting.

Preston Sprinkle: I think it stifles our faith in Jesus when we put our faith in political parties. The Greek word pistis is translated faith, but it can also be translated allegiance. So when we put our faith in Jesus and him alone, that should put a shadow on any other kind of hope or support we put in any other potential leaders in the world.

Rick Langer: So that's an interesting distinction there because I think a lot of us think of having faith in lots of different, you may have faith in the monetary system, so I put my money in a bank or whatever, and there is a positive sense of faith that you have in lots of things.

Tim Muehlhoff: Detroit Lions, go ahead. I digress.

Rick Langer: Let me continue. But one of the things that is interesting about an allegiance is it does have that connotation of the allegiance that are poorly shared. They are not things that are meant to be divided. In fact, we have a saying about divided allegiance that immediately seems to be problematic.

Preston Sprinkle: When it comes to my citizenship in America, I mean, I try to stick to the biblical language. I submit to governor authorities. I pray for my, I probably don't do as much as I should, but I should be praying for my leaders. I obey the laws unless those laws conflict with my allegiance and my obedience to Jesus. But yeah, the term allegiance, I think I don't give my allegiance to my country, I just don't. My allegiance is to Christ and Him alone. That doesn't mean, again, I'm again obeyed laws or whatever, but I think allegiances, it has...

Rick Langer: Is a different feeling.

Preston Sprinkle: It's a religious language. It really is. Biblically speaking, it's very religious. So I think that's when it crosses over. I don't give my allegiance to any political party.

Tim Muehlhoff: And that allows me to critique my country even if I love my country. That kind of language, that kind of context allows me to step back and say, "Listen, I'm an American and I'm proud of our heritage, but there's good and bad in the heritage." I mean, it would be pretty myopic to say, "Hey, red, white and blue. And I'm not ever going to critique my country." Having lived in the former Soviet Union for a year with my wife, God bless us, that we can critique our country. I mean, the freedom of the press alone separates us from where we lived for an entire year. And so I think those are things to be celebrated, not shunned. And I love this exile language means I do love my country, but it's not the kingdom of God.

Preston Sprinkle: Right. Yeah. Of the Babylon's in this world, America is probably among the better of them, certainly better than the North Korea or China or other places. I would not want to live there. But it's still Babylon. It's still theologically not on the side of the kingdom of God. It's just not.

Tim Muehlhoff: That's great. Hey, we try in our own little small way to open up discourse, we try to do that at Biola's campus. We try to do it with college students. We try to do it on Capitol Hill with very mixed results. So we've been a huge fan of your Theology in the Raw conference that you really do put money where your mouth is and you organize this conference. I just want to read to you a description of the conference and I just had to chuckle as I actually went to the website to read it. Here we go.

At the theology in the raw conference, we will be challenged to think like exiles about race, sexuality, gender, critical race theory, hell, transgendered identities, climate change, creation care, American politics, and what it means to love your Democrat and Republican neighbor as yourself. Different views will be presented, no question is off-limits. No political party will be praised. Everyone will be challenged to think. Jesus will be upheld as supreme. We're now a collective of church and de-churched Christian Contrarians who resists the echo chamber. Preston Sprinkle, what were you thinking? Was life just boring?

Preston Sprinkle: I'm going to, I have not read that in a while. That must've been when we first did the conference and I probably wrote that. I have not read that in a while. That's funny.

Tim Muehlhoff: What were you, I mean, let's just do the greatest hits of issues. So tell us what led you to create the conference and then we want to hear about the mechanics, because we're fascinated. How do you actually pull this off?

Preston Sprinkle: The conference grew out of the podcast, so if you know nothing about the podcast, that would give you a running start to it. In short, my podcast is all about having curious conversations with a diverse range of interesting people. It's not usually a debate. Sometimes there might be some of that, but it's me sitting down and getting to know another person, their viewpoint, try to steel man, their arguments, try to play devil's advocate even if I agree with them. In fact, I might even push back on people I agree with more than even people I don't, which throws people off. Like, "Where are you at?" I'm like, "I'm having a conversation." So I have found that there is a quiet hunger for that kind of thing. It has attracted a certain kind of person. It is also repelled another kind of person too.

Not everybody wants that. They want somebody to sit in front of a microphone and tell you exactly what you believe and what you think they should believe and close in prayer and that's it. Kind of like a sermon. And I often tell people the podcast is not like a sermon from a stage. It is like a conversation with your neighbor. Those are two different, I mean, communications guys here. So this is a different genre of communication. If you cross those genres, you're going to totally be frustrated with the conversation. And I'll say probably most of the people I have on the podcast, maybe a lot of the people I have on the podcast, if I was a pastor of a church, I would not invite them to be a guest preacher to open up the Bible and say, "Here's what you should believe." I'm like, "Well, no, I probably wouldn't do that." But that's not the nature of the podcast. So it is an acquired taste.

I have found that it seems like there is this kind of silent majority that actually love to listen in on, well, what does this side say? What does this side say? Or what does this person actually believe? I heard they're a heretic, and I heard that somebody said, you shouldn't read their book, it's garbage. But is that true? Are they representing them correctly? What does this person actually believe? And so I try to give space for people to do that. And having said that, Tim, I mean I would say the majority of the people out on the podcast, there's still a lot of resonance with, it's not like I'm just having... The other day I had, you might know Adam Davidson, he's a Jewish atheist I had him on. And that was just me just getting to know this guy has major problems with evangelicals. I just want to know why.

I'm not here to debate it. Other people, I might see eye to eye on 98% of the things and I'll have them on the podcast. So it is a diverse range of I think, interesting people to be fun. So I didn't answer your question. So in short, the conference, so I've been doing the podcast since 2015. The conference basically grew out of that and it was trying to be a place where people who have really enjoyed the podcast, have listened from a distance, can be together in a room and basically do that sort of thing live where they can see people. It's embodied. I can see people face to face that have been listening to me for eight years. And so really the conference has the same sort of vibe as the podcast.

Tim Muehlhoff: Our good friend, Dr. Ed Yuzinski was telling me he's been a part of it. He's attended it, and so if I get this correct, you will invite maybe two to three, to four, and they're going to give different perspectives when it comes to critical race theory or even the eternality of hell. And they get up and they do a little maybe five to seven minute, and then they all sit on a couch and take questions from the audience, but they get to interact with each other. Is that right?

Preston Sprinkle: Sort of. So each conference has been, there's four different sessions, three ish hours that focus on one topic. Usually there's two to four different speakers. I will say, I would say the majority of the sessions we've done, it's not a debate. In fact, the majority, there's probably a lot of agreement. They're just hitting things from different angles. So for instance, this year we're doing a session on the gospel and race after George Floyd, it's in Minneapolis, the conference. So we have Latasha Morrison who's done a lot of just bridge building work, questions of race. We have Ephraim Smith who is an African-American pastor who's been in different cultural contexts, urban, he's been in suburban white context. So he again, can help navigate that. Then I have two African-American police officers who are going to give their perspective of being black, but also on the police side. And so in a sense, I'm not really putting these voices up against each other. They're just coming from different angles, are going to help us. Oh, Ed's going to give it kind of a, he's the only white speaker, and he's going to give-

Tim Muehlhoff: Love it.

Preston Sprinkle: ... from a white evangelical perspective, who understands conservative white evangelicals and maybe some questions they have about the race conversation, but also he's been in many multi-ethnic s