Michael Rhodes — lecturer in Old Testament at Carey Baptist College in New Zealand, former pastor, and author of Practicing the King's Economy and Just Discipleship — returns to discuss his new book, Reimagining Biblical Politics: What Scripture Says About Public Life and Why It Matters.

Rhodes wrote the book deliberately without addressing contemporary American political issues, hoping to give a partisan-divided church something it could use together. His argument is that Scripture speaks about politics constantly, and in many voices: John says get out of Babylon, Jeremiah says seek its welfare, Paul says submit and also flees a trial he considers unjust, and the Hebrew midwives lie to Pharaoh and are blessed for it. Underneath the diversity, one claim holds everything together — the Lord reigns.

He distinguishes outpost politics, the public life of a people living under God's reign, from pilgrim politics, how that people engages nations that don't recognize it. Both are political; only one usually gets called that.

The conversation turns to why churches gather less diversity than their neighborhoods, what Rhodes learned from a conversation after Trayvon Martin's death, and why Daniel worked for Nebuchadnezzar and criticized him anyway.

Go deeper: Christians & Politics

Thinking Christian is hosted by Dr. James Spencer, president of the D. L. Moody Center and author of Digital Discernment (InterVarsity Press). Each conversation reads the Bible as the final authority for life and faith, questioning the assumptions of our culture, even our Christian culture, so that we don't settle for a narrower vision than God's word offers.

Unsettling convention. Cultivating conviction.
Episodes, articles, and questions: thinkingchristian.org
About James Spencer: thinkingchristian.org/james
The Thinking Christian Framework: thinkingchristian.org/framework
Order Digital Discernment: amazon.com

Advertising and partnership inquiries: info@thinkingchristian.org

Find more from Michael at https://michaeljrhodes.substack.com

Chapters:

00:00 The book, the podcast, the Substack

02:12 A choir of political voices

06:25 Faithful action that doesn't look alike

09:38 Outpost politics and pilgrim politics

14:04 Why blurred lines are a gift

18:34 What Scripture demands and what it leaves open

22:33 Rounding up at the checkout

25:07 Where local political action actually happens

29:09 Is justice the church's job or the state's?

32:33 The house church in China

34:19 The lines churches inherit

38:13 Who arranges the chairs

42:00 Same footage, different verdict

46:13 Who sets the table

51:30 Daniel worked for Nebuchadnezzar and criticized him

52:20 Learning to see what you're not seeing

59:49 When presidents quote Scripture about America

1:03:12 Designed poor: a Memphis neighborhood

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Continuing the faith and politics series, James Spencer and Ashish Varma turn to artificial intelligence — starting with the data centers going up across the country, which consume enormous land, power, and water while generating far fewer local jobs than the factories and mills they're often compared to.

From there the conversation widens. Both push on the promise of efficiency: whether a technology that lets you work faster has actually given anyone time back, what gets lost when a middle schooler reaches for the calculator instead of the long-form work, and why the steps toward a goal may matter as much as the goal. James introduces the idea of the tyranny of small decisions — that we adopt technologies one at a time, with clear near-term benefits and no view of where the accumulation leads — and argues that Christians at least have a telos against which to measure the trade.

They also discuss what a soft transhumanism looks like when it becomes ambient, why converging interests don't require a conspiracy, and where ordinary practices of resistance are still available.

Chapters (approximate, from speaker turns — verify against the final cut):

00:00 Data centers: land, power, water, and jobs that don't come

02:25 Does theology touch everyday life at all?

06:39 The efficiency promise, and what it actually delivered

12:49 Efficiency for whom? Paper, batteries, and hidden costs

15:00 The calculator, the long way, and what process builds

16:30 Phil Jackson and trusting the steps

18:33 The tyranny of small decisions

22:45 No telos, no way to weigh a trade-off

25:06 What would you give up to not have the data center?

26:00 Sealed devices and the compromises we already made

32:17 Vinyl, print books, flip phones: the analog return

36:29 Practices of resistance: skip the summary, read the page

43:10 Local action and Hauerwas on assimilation

45:27 Converging interests aren't a conspiracy

51:00 Soft transhumanism and the limits we can't engineer away

58:20 Bodies that need to move, creation that has limits

1:02:00 Atrophy: what we lose the capacity to do

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American Christians with his answer: the church’s task is to preach the word of God.

Asked whether churches should urge members to enlist, buy war bonds, and preach the issues of the war, Barth answers with a counter-question: does the church know its mission is to preach the word of God according to Scripture? From there he supports the fight against Hitler while refusing to let the church become an instrument of the state, rejecting both identification with any political party and a “timeless” spiritual ministry cut off from the present. James and Ashish connect this to the Barmen Declaration, Stanley Hauerwas, and the German Christians’ surrender to Nazism.

Barth challenged 93 American Protestant leaders who claimed that Christian principles depended on winning the war, and the same reasoning returns in every “most crucial election.” James and Ashish argue that the church must speak its own language rather than a party’s talking points, loving the world on God’s terms rather than its own. Being in the world but not of it, they suggest, is a matter of allegiance, not only personal morality.

In this episode:

• What is the true function of the church in wartime, according to Karl Barth?
• Should the church identify with any political party?
• Why Barth rejects a “timeless” spirituality and calls the present God’s time
• The Barmen Declaration and the German Christians’ capitulation to Nazism
• Speaking the church’s own language instead of a political party’s talking points

Go deeper: Christians and Politics

Thinking Christian is hosted by Dr. James Spencer, president of the D. L. Moody Center and author of Digital Discernment (InterVarsity Press). Each conversation reads the Bible as the final authority for life and faith, questioning the assumptions of our culture, even our Christian culture, so that we don’t settle for a narrower vision than God’s word offers.

Unsettling convention. Cultivating conviction.
Episodes, articles, and questions: thinkingchristian.org
About James Spencer: thinkingchristian.org/james
The Thinking Christian Framework: thinkingchristian.org/framework
Order Digital Discernment: amazon.com

Subscribe: YouTube · Apple Podcasts · Spotify
Advertising and partnership inquiries: info@thinkingchristian.org

Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.