Sigve Tonstad, “The Election of Donald Trump and the Future of the World”

So thank you for having me and thank you for accepting the topic I have proposed. It was my suggestion, and so it is also necessary to say that anything I may say that, that, uh, is, uh, what should I say, uh, controversial or offensive, or that is on me, not on my host. So do not hold it against him or Adventist Today. And, and if it gets really bad, please double your contributions to Adventist Today as a kind constellation to, to make it up. I hope I will not say anything that is really offensive, so, so, but just in case, I thought I would, I would, uh, you know, make that point.

So here we are. And I, my title is the election of Donald Trump and the future of the world. And I am planning to focus on two specific issues where the element of uncertainty will be less, it will not be, be significant. I think, uh, we can talk about those two points. I wish to make with a high degree of certainty. But before I do that, let me do some things by way of, of introduction.

So here is Marilyn Robinson, and this is her book in 2012, *Reading Genesis*, where she says that the Bible is a theodicy, a meditation on the problem of evil. And I just wanted to quote that because I rarely find someone who says something that I agree with so heartily as I do with Marilyn Robinson. I do think that the Bible is the theodicy and should be read as the theodicy, far more than it is actually. So, just to, she's also, she's also an astonishingly good, uh, novelist, by the way. Yes, of course. And she has written, she's the author of the book *Gilead* and many other, many other very influential books. So now she has read this meditation on Genesis, or written this meditation on Genesis. So the Bible is a theodicy. Keep that in mind, that assertion in mind.

And then here is another one. So, just to, three weeks ago, maybe two weeks ago only, we had the Society of Biblical Literature meetings, the annual meetings. This year, the meetings were held in San Diego. And the president of, uh, Tamara K. Eskenazi, she gave the presidential address on November the 23rd. And the title was "The Bible in Politics and Politics in the Bible." It was a very thoughtful meditation, but it was also, uh, a claim, an observation, maybe only, that there is politics in the Bible, and that you can't, uh, deny it, and that you need to reckon with it. And there is politics in our lives too. And so she says, "The Bible is a book of politics," she said verbatim in her talk. And then she said, "We neglect politics at our peril." So that should be then a kind of legitimize my topic today, that we can talk about politics. It is not beside the point. And maybe we have in our church space talked about it too little because it has been there, and it has festered, and it has filled our space, but not the space of church where we meet and talk about, uh, what should I say, spiritual things, even though we are reading the Bible, we are in some ways bypassing its political, uh, uh, character.

And here is one more thing. I had never heard of RA Rachel Havlock before I, I came to San Diego this year. She isn't a regular, I don't think, in, in biblical studies, although she has a background and is a very competent biblical scholar too. But she is mostly professor of English at the University of Illinois in Chicago. And she also has a significant ecological commitment. She is the director of the Freshwater Initiative at that university, and they are concerned about preservation of the Great Lakes. So she has written several books. And this one is the most recent one, *The Joshua Generation: Israeli Occupation and the Bible*. And if I were pressing, I'd look to see if I could find a statement by Rachel Havlock that would fit exactly. But if I were to press her, or the way I read her, I have bought the book and read it now, uh, is that the Bible is mostly a political book, that some of the texts are politically motivated. And then, then you could also say that it is a, a dangerous political book because some of those political messages in the Bible have found contemporary expressions. So Harlock's concern, and or her, she documents in this book that the Book of Joshua has become a very important text in current Middle Eastern affairs, that the Book of Joshua and its violence is used as a script with which to legitimize violence that happens as we speak. And I would say that presentation, she had, she had a presentation in a, uh, session that dealt with violence in the Bible. It is probably the best or most stirring presentation I have ever heard in the years I have attended meetings. And she was a combination of excellent scholarship, uh, eloquence, and deep conviction. She was incandescent. And it was very, very, uh, what should I say, uh, it was a kind of wakeup call. And I, I took an interest in, in her work right away. So keep that in mind too, as we proceed.

Now, some things about politics have been on my horizon in the New Testament. And here is a page, a slide from one of my lectures at Loma Linda when I teach Romans, you know, Paul and Politics, or the Political Theology of Paul by Jacob Taubes. That's a book written many years ago. So the notion that we should be politically naive when we read, uh, the Bible, and even when we read the New Testament, or when we read the letters of Paul, is contested. And it is pretty much a, a consensus that that one, one needs to pay attention to, to politics when, when we read the Bible. And that we are probably somewhat behind in that regard in the Adventist community.

Here is another illustration from my talks to students when I teach Romans at Loma Linda. This is Romans 13. Seven verses in Romans 13 that are among the most controversial, uh, texts, those seven verses in the whole New Testament, perhaps. So you have Paul discussing notions of citizenship in Romans. And you see that there is a personal aspect, there is a local aspect. The personal and local aspect is altruism that Paul instills in his congregations, an ethos where you pay attention to the good of others, you do not just think about yourself. And that, so that is personal, local, communal. Now, how, how does that work when you think national, or when you think global? That's the paradox here. Can you make altruistic, altruism, thinking about the good of others, can you make that work beyond your local community, in your nation, and in the world, as a global citizen, as it were? And when I was writing my commentary on Romans some years ago, I had to spend a lot of time on that part of it because that there is a completely different group of scholars who have, uh, written on, on the politics of Paul in Romans 13 and in other parts of the book.

So one text that came up was Reinhold Niebuhr. And this *Time* magazine cover is, I think, from 1948. It was their 25th anniversary issue. And the Man of the Year that year was the German theologian and public intellectual Reinhold Niebuhr. So here are some things that he says that I think is relevant, just as introduction to our topic. So again, remember my previous slide about local, national, and global. The paradox is that patriotism transmutes individual unselfishness into national egoism. It therefore becomes the vehicle of altruistic impulses and expresses itself on occasion with such fervor that the critical attitude of the individual toward the nation and its enterprises is almost completely destroyed. Patriotism swallows up everything. The unqualified character of this devotion is the very basis for the nation's power and the freedom to use the power without moral restraint. This is Niebuhr in the book *Moral Man and Immoral Society*. Here, I, I read on. Thus, now try to get this point. It is an amazingly insightful point from my, as I see it. Thus, the unselfishness of individuals makes for the selfishness of nations. So you are willing to sacrifice for your nation, and your nation harnesses that willingness to be selfish in the global community. Make Babylon great again. Make Germany great again. Make America great again. You name it. The unselfishness of individuals makes for the selfishness of the nations. And citizens may not be aware of that. They may not understand that they are actually contributing to a, what should I say, a form of national egoism. That is why people, the hope of solving the larger social problems of mankind merely by extending the social sympathies of individuals is so vain. What lies beyond the nation, the community of mankind, is too vague to inspire devotion.

Now, I shall not misrepresent God much if I say that the God of heaven is a God of all mankind. That the God of heaven is interested in the well-being of the community of mankind. And that believers in that God, or we as believers in that God, we have to think in terms that are not, uh, just confined to sort of national, national priorities. Here again, uh, and I just have to move this a little, since the class character of national governments is a primary, though not the only, cause of their greed. Present international anarchy may continue until the fear of catastrophe amends, or catastrophe itself destroys the present social system and builds more cooperative national societies. There may not be enough intelligence in modern society to prevent catastrophe. That's the background here, just as a kind of contextual or ideological or perspectival issue for the topic of the election of Donald Trump and the future of the world. And you can have a sort of sense of a, of, uh, Niebuhr's point of view as relevant to, to our topic.

One more thing. And this is not me, but I do not disagree with George Will, who has now been a columnist and a, and a certified card-carrying conservative in America for, for, uh, 50 years. There was just a celebratory note of his work as a, as a conservative columnist. He used to be a Republican. He left the Republican party in 2016. And here he says that Trump's energy, unleavened by intellect and untethered to principle, serves only his sovereign instinct to pander to those who adore him as much as he does. Unshakeably smitten, they are imperious to the Everest of evidence that he disdains them as a basket of gullibles. He understands that his unremitting coarseness satisfies their unpolitical agenda of smashing crockery, even though his self-indulgent floundering precludes fulfillment of the promises he flippantly made to assuage their sense of being disdained. He gives his G, he gives his Gables, not governance, by tantrum, but tantrum as governance. Yes, this person has been deeply offended by the rise of a political figure like, like Mr. Trump. And you can take it to him. And, and his view, his deeply held convictions about what conservatism would look like, and why the Trump brand isn't conservatism. These are just things by way of introduction.

Now I want to go to my two specific points that I hope we can, we can, uh, discuss, uh, in our, in our interactive, uh, part. So the first point I want to make is that with the election of Donald Trump, we will have a shift from climate change denial to climate change defiance. And I have chosen those words, uh, uh, uh, carefully. I meant to be, to be circumspect. I think that the Trump brand is a brand of rule-breaking and of disdain, even for, for elementary things, and, and disdain for coalitions, compromised, you name it. So I will say that you can defy the courts, and you can defy the Constitution too, if you want to. But it is going to be quite a bit harder to defy climate change, or to defy the ecological realities of human existence. And I pick this point because I think this is one area where it doesn't, it is not enough to be an American. It is much better to be an Adventist. And it is actually a very good idea to be a Seventh-day Adventist because Seventh-day Adventism has tenets that are profoundly ecological. From our view of the materiality of existence, the materiality of the body, we do not have immortal souls. We are bodies. We are material beings. We live in a material world, and we are living interactively with the world, the Earth, and other creatures. And we have the Sabbath, with a blessing on non-human creation from the beginning, and the Sabbath commandment that mandates rest for animals, and the Sabbath year that mandates rest for the earth, and the Jubilee that also has an element of economics in it to keep us from, from, uh, uh, destroying the Earth. And can I do one more? We have eschatology. Adventist eschatology, where we do not go to heaven to stay in heaven forever. We see in the Book of Revelation God moving to the Earth to spend eternity on Earth as an earthly. That's those are Adventist distinctives. And they are huge investments in ecology and in care for the creation, and for also climate.

So here is Trump's pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, which, by the way, was created by a Republican president, Richard Nixon, when he was US president. So if confirmed, Zeldin would lead the Republican effort to roll back Biden's key climate change regulations, including rules tightening the pollution from power plants and tailpipes. At EPA, Zeldin will carry out Trump's energy and environmental agenda, which includes pulling back Biden-era rules on climate and air pollution, and potentially rescinding millions of dollars in funding for clean energy under the Inflation Reduction Act. The administration is expected to take a more aggressive stance in challenging California's autonomy in enforcing environmental standards that are more stringent than those set by the federal government, many of which picked up as models for more than a dozen other blue states.

One more comment. President-elect Trump has been crystal clear that he will do exactly what he did in his first term, which is to withdraw the United States from the global Paris Accord. This is about breaking crockery. He did this his first term. President Biden put the US back in. Trump is going to pull back out this time. However, it seems likely that Trump would not just pull the US out from the agreement, the Accord, but from the underlying United Nations legal structure for the entire, that entire Accord, which would make it a lot more difficult for the US to ever rejoin.

Here is another pick. And I don't, I had studied this with some interest, uh, uh, Trump's pick for Interior Secretary. That's the, your, the national parks and all of that. And there has been a tendency of Republican presidents from the time of Ronald Reagan to pick heads of the Interior Department that are actually wishing not to to preserve, but more to sabotage, uh, intrusive rules. North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum is expected to implement President-elect Donald Trump's "drill, baby, drill" ethos on public lands and waters, if confirmed to helm the massive Interior Department.

I have one specific, and actually that is my main ecological concern. It isn't only ecological, it is ecological and ethical. And it is more ethical than ecological, because the contribution of our tendency, or the world's consumption of animals, uh, as food, is a greater contributor to climate change than our use of fossil fuels. You may not see that, but the enormous impact of the consumption of animal foods exceeds that of, of, of the cars we drive and the airplanes we fly. And that is, that is ecological, that means contribution to global warming. But the other side to that is that we, that it involves a way of treating animals that is so abusive that the relationship between human beings and animals is completely different than it used to be in the past. And you have factory farming, both for chicken and for pigs. All pigs raised and eaten in America today are factory farmed. And you also have it for large cattle, to some extent, even though some of the large cattle are outdoors. The picture on your right, on, on my right here, is from the north, from North Carolina. North Carolina raises as many pigs every year as there are people living in the state, 7 million. And the waste from the pigs in North Carolina is 30 times greater than the waste of the human beings who live in the state. But the, the way that waste is handled, human beings' waste goes down in the sewer. But in, uh, with the animal waste from the factory farms, it goes out in open lagoons that are polluting, uh, the waters and the waterways of the state. So that is the issue of climate. But the issue of climate is not as big as the issue of ethics.

And here is one person who has been a favorite of mine for now 20 years, Matthew Scully, and his book *Dominion*, that came out in, I think, 2002. *The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy*. I want you to listen to Matthew Scully. About 80 million, uh, of the 95 million hogs slaughtered each year in America, according to the National Pork Producers Council, are intensively reared in mass confinement farms, never once in their life, in their time on Earth, feeling soil or sun, sunshine. Now, let me add to this a comment. The life expectancy of a pig is about 15 years. The life expectancy of a pig raised today from about, from weighing about 2 pounds to achieving the weight of about 280 pounds at the time of slaughter is, is much shorter. The life expectancy of a pig now is about 7 months. So this is the notion of intensively reared. That's what it means. And then Scully says that factory farming isn't just killing, it is negation, a complete denial of the animal as a living being with his or her own needs and nature. It is not the worst evil we can do, but it is the worst evil we can do to them. That's the ecology part. And this is where I would say, and I had that as my headline, the problem ecologically isn't just "drill, baby, drill." That's it. It is also, maybe in a worsening way, even than in the past, "kill, baby, kill," or to continue uninterrupted the unregulated practice and abuse that we have in the nation's factory farms.

My second point, I will try to make that brief, is that in the Israel-Palestine conflict, we will see a shift from political navigation, that is to say, navigating a complicated political issue, to adopting more explicitly a divine script for that conflict. We will have more religion than we have had. We have already plenty of religion, but there has been an attempt to make it seem otherwise, to make it seem that it isn't just religion driving this. And we have this in our faces now with the, with the calamitous destruction of Gaza, where 2 million people have been made homeless. Houses are destroyed, hospitals are destroyed, the schools, the museums, you name it. There is nothing really left, maybe not hardly a single viable building in, in Gaza. So what is the likelihood here for the next four years? Well, you can go back to see what happened the last four, four, the last period when Trump was the, was the president, and, and there was a very strong pro-Israel bias that was cheered on by Trump's Evangelical religious voters, who already have that kind of divine script in place for what US policy ought to be. And he has now appointed Mike Huckabee to be the ambassador to Israel. And Huckabee has maintained throughout the years that the West Bank belongs to Israel. And recently, he said that the title deed was given by God to Abraham and to his heirs. And you should not doubt that these people really believe that. They do have a sense that the Bible is a political book, and it contains a political script for current political international issues, maybe the most toxic of which is the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

So there you have it. Just as an aside, this is a, my, my graph here, or my illustration on the right here. Scofield, 7. This illustration is from a book manuscript. I hope I get my book published next year. I am aiming it at the 7th Day Adventist. I'm calling it *Beyond the Remnant: Meditations on Identity*. And I have some hopes that I can get it published. But the book on the left here, by Donald Harmon Atkinson, *The Americanization of the Apocalypse*, is, that is the third volume of a series where he shows how the Bible became Americanized through dispensationalist theology. And you know, and if you don't, it is time that you discover it. Most of us, that many, several hundreds of the members of the House of Representatives in the US subscribe to dispensationalist political and religious tenets. And just to put one of these points in, in focus here, uh, that in this eschatological scenario that you have in, in the Scofield reference Bible and in dispensationalism, in this theology, is a political role for Israel that in the end is catastrophic for the Jews, because dispensationalists, they believe that with the battle of Armageddon, two-thirds of the Jews will be killed. But still, there is a role to be had for Israel, and there is a duty of America to help implement God's design for a political Israel in the world.

So I have three more slides that I want to show you, and just to make you aware of something that you probably do, that most of us probably don't know. I would also say that if we at Loma Linda had behaved like a real university and not continue to play a narrow and, and very, uh, what should I say, uh, narrow game, or a sort of laid-back game, we would have known who these people are, and they would be already household old words to us. Daniel Boyarin is one of the world's foremost experts on early Christianity and Second Temple Judaism. He is a very learned man and an extremely interesting person. I have heard him in person talk, and I have read some of his books and benefited from his scholarship. He has also written a book about Paul's letter to Galatians that has the title *Paul: A Radical Jew*. He used to be a Zionist. He served in the Israeli army, Israeli army. He believed that there was a kind of religious script for a political entity, a political state. But when he served in the army and did duty on the West Bank, he came, he had second thoughts. He thought, "Whatever may be necessary for the state is damaging to my religion." So he is a practicing Jew. He's a Jewish believer. He's not a Christian, but he is a believer in God. And he has written this book, *The No-State Solution*, as an attempt to separate Judaism from Zionism. And that is a very important detail here. It is probably not possible to separate Judaism from Zionism in the religious communities in Israel, and same thing for Evangelical support of Israel and their dispensationalist convictions. But you should know that there are some deeply, I say, spiritual and devout Jewish believers who have started thinking about this subject in a different way, and who do not want America to be so eager to implement something that is damaging. It's damaging to Israel too, but it is also damaging to a conception of Judaism as an ennobling influence for all the people in the world.

Here is one more. Shaul Magid. *The Necessity of Exile*. And you can see his, who he is, you know, a professor at Dartmouth and also teaching at Harvard. He also had the same journey, a deep commitment to Zionist tenets, and then when he was doing military service in the West Bank, he thought, "This isn't right. This is not compatible with my Jewish faith, because my Jewish faith mandates a benefit to everyone. It has a universalist aspiration." So he has written this book, *The Necessity of Exile*.

And then the last one. He has Peter Beinart. Has a podcast that I subscribe to. And this book hasn't been published yet. It will be out in January. *Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning*. And all of these people, who are all observant Jews, practicing believers, and deeply immersed in Jewish thought and the ethical tenets of Judaism, they believe that who salvages that kind of Judaism, you have to detach from the political vision. That the politics of that used to be part of that vision simply has been a failure. This is not to adjudicate what the political future of Israel will be, but it is a word about about the, uh, how, how these Jewish people are actually pleading for the rest of the world to retreat from this, uh, mixing of politics and religion that is happening, and that is so rampant in America today.

So, other concerns aside, you know, you can look at these headlines. I won't read what they are. There are many, many other concerns. And I, when I thought about what lies ahead in this world, I was, I shared that with George Gibson at Union Adventist University some weeks ago. And he wrote me a note back of a conversation. He has taught history at Union for many, many years, American history. And he wrote me back saying that there was a conversation after the Constitutional Convention in 1787, where a lady talked to Benjamin Franklin. And she said, "Now, what is it, what do we have, Doctor?" she said to Ben Franklin. "Do we have a monarchy or do we have a republic?" And Benjamin Franklin said, "A republic, if you can keep it." And the notion that that sort of subject may actually have been actualized by what you are experiencing in this country right now.

So here is my conclusion, and my last slide. So the election of Donald Trump and the future of the world. Number one, prepare for a shift from climate change denial to climate change defiance. And then think, as the Seventh-day Adventist, or as a believer in God and the Bible, and, and maybe some Adventist tenets, what sort of witness you and I might want to have in such a time as this. And number two, prepare for more religion and more use and abuse of scripture in the conflict in the Middle East. That is to say, a convergence between religious settlers and Trump-supporting US Evangelicals. Thank you very much.

Oh, this was, this was very stimulating. Um, I'm going to turn it over to, uh, my, uh, fellow Adventist Today, um, leader here, if I can find him. Where are you, Bjorn? I don't see him on here. Oh, there you are. Okay. Okay. Ask to unmute. And, uh, ah, there we go. Yeah, I, I was, I was feeling very muted there. Yeah, and invisible. I was, I was waving my hands and everything. Yeah. And I saw you. Great. Excellent, excellent. Go ahead. Make sure you make your announcement first. Uh, yes, yes. Well said, Siggy. Said, if you don't like the class today, give more money so they can get better teachers. I don't know. We, we, um, we want Siggy back. That was very, very, um, thought-provoking. And I'm sure we all have questions. So my first announcement is going to be, please everyone, start, start putting up your hand. I realize this is a, uh, we'll have different opinions on this one, but please put up your hands and let's have some questions for Sig. I'll start with one since I have, uh, the unfair advantage of talking first. But yes, let me do my little commercial. Uh, you, you all know if you were here last week, and if you've, uh, been anywhere close to AT lately, that we're in the midst of year-end fundraising season. And thanks to you guys, uh, we had a fantastic Giving Tuesday this past Tuesday. It was, it was just like a dream come true. Over $28,000 in one day. I mean, I'm, I'm very, very grateful. It allows us to do what we do here, uh, to have open conversations. It allows for the journalism of AT. And, you know, there hasn't been a more, sort of, critical time where, where there's so many, uh, pressures right now on independent Adventist journalism. The GC is making it more and more difficult. If you know, I'm not going to go on about it, but if you look at what's on our site currently, you'll see the measures, uh, that are being, uh, adopted, being voted in, to, to push back on, on, uh, open journalism. So we appreciate, uh, your support. And I'm going to, uh, post the link here. The fundraiser is going on right now. Um, so, I, I think I've been asked to, uh, moderate a little bit because I'm, uh, I'm Swedish. I'm not American. So, uh, I, I'm, I'm supposed to be, I'm supposed to be neutral, even though we just joined NATO because, because we were shaking in our boots. But, uh, I'm, I'm the closest you get to a neutral person, I guess. So, um, Siggy, what, what's, um, I, I felt that your, uh, your presentation was something that probably a lot of us would echo in this room. What I do wonder about, though, is I feel like, I feel like conversations become more and more siloed. So, you know, we have conversations here where, where most of us are going to agree with what you're saying. But isn't that exactly the problem that we, uh, whether we're Adventists or we're of some other leaning in, in community, media is so fractured, and, and communities are becoming more and more, sort of, aligned along political lines, that that we don't have much of an effect on, on the, on the greater society? So how do we go from, uh, being vigilant about climate change and, you know, the, the religious, uh, threats that that Trump are pushing up against, that religious, religious threats that Trump has, and allow us to, um, yeah, how do we have a bigger impact on society rather than just kind of like paring back our talking points, I guess? That's my, uh, that's my question. Outside the bubbles of Loma Linda, new academic centers of Adventism, how do we, how do we move beyond, beyond academic Adventism and the sort of political biases that we have there?

There isn't that much. There is not that much, uh, uh, difference in my view between what you call academic Adventism and the rest of the, of Adventism. The, so-called academic Adventism is quite, uh, just about non-existent when it comes to attention to the two points I made here, uh, ecological concerns and, and political issues in the Middle East. So there is no difference. If you think that we have a more vigorous conversation about these matters in Loma Linda, we don't. There, you know, and I said earlier that if we behaved like a genuine university, these people, that some of the people that I feature, we would know who they are. But nobody knows who they are. And that is true here in Loma Linda too, or Andrews, or you can go, you go, you name it. So that's one thing. The second thing is that, that if it's true that the Bible is a political book, then certain political conversations are not just legitimate, they are necessary aspects of being Bible readers. So the silence that we have had in church space, the fear of talking about these issues, is actually actually a form of, of, of neglect, a sin of omission, or or spinelessness, if you want to call it that way, call it that, because, you know, these are legitimate biblical concerns. And then one more thing. The issue of climate change and concern about the climate. I have no doubts that there is climate change. But if I were to talk to a climate change denier, I could still make a very strong case for ecological concerns in the Bible. Uh, you know, yes, the Bible speaks about the Earth being destroyed, and in Jeremiah, you see the, the, a sort of decreation of the world. But, but the Bible, in, in Sabbath thoughts, especially in Sabbath ideology and in the prophets, has an interest in, in the well-being of the earth and in non-human creation. And factory farming is a grave crime against God's creatures, quite apart from the contribution to climate change. So Adventists, as your believers, and as with a mandate to take care of other creatures and the well-being of other creatures, we should have had this as on our agenda without just needing a kind of utilitarian, uh, reason, you know, well, the climate is changing, we better do something. One of the things we should do is to eat less meat. That's true. But there are many other reasons why we should do something and position ourselves as a solution to the, the egregious abuse of non-human creatures that factory farming represents. Thank you, Siggy. I, uh, appreciate that. And I, uh, I can sense the passion. So thank you very, very much for, um, responding there. And, uh, I agree that the, I feel like the one of the more relevant contributions that we can bring as Adventists to society today is, is that, you know, the kind of the stewardship angle, uh, and, and certainly the factory farming is, is a big, big issue there. Uh, Edward, um, Lauren is, uh, saying that we should jump straight to you. We come, come back to Lauren. Uh, and I'm going to reiterate our call for hands. This is a very, very, um, uh, current topic. So this is something that that is, is worth talking about and, and worth, uh, discussing. So please do raise your hands and join the discussion. Uh, over to Eduardo, who I think is unmuted.

Sig, um, years ago, I went to listen to a lecture at the California University by, I, I'm afraid to try to pronounce his name, but he's well known as the American Rabbi. So he gave the lecture. He opened it for Q&A. And I asked him, "When you cry for the death of terrorists, do you do it as an American or as a Rabbi?" The only thing that I remember he answered me is, "Who are you?" And, you know, the trouble, if he does it as a Rabbi, he's in the same level as the terrorists in the name of God. And I think that, uh, Adventists have a big trouble to stay away from issues, political or environmental or whatever, because the way they see it is related to the state, to the government. And I think that, uh, we should stay away from any issue that is related, uh, with the government, but at the same time, is related to religion or morals. What do you think?

I do not think that we should stay away from from government and politics when it comes to issues like how to treat animals, how animals should be raised, whether factory farms should be legitimate. That is a perfectly legitimate political issue. It is a hot, but an ethical issue. And why we have not seen, you know, try to engage on that is, is, is quite strange, because there is so much about it in the Bible. And on the issue of politics and religion and political scripts, or biblical, the claim that there are biblical scripts for political issues in the world today, that is, that is neither, that is all. Even now, what I try to say is that even Jewish thinkers feel that they have been ill-served by the mix of those things. And of course, in our, uh, New Testament orientation, who can ignore Jesus saying to Pilate, "My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting for me." So we have lots of things to, to show for ourselves on that. And, and I wanted to feature those Jewish thinkers because I feel for them. I feel with them. I feel their, their pain, their grief, and their, and their struggle to, to salvage the universalist aspirations of Judaism, namely, that it is a religion that has the good of all people, uh, in mind. Thank you.

Sig, can I have 10 seconds?

Sure. Not, not up to me. That's up to the moderator. Yeah. If we keep it to, to a short, a short response, because we, we want to make sure we get around for other questions, but yes, go for it.

Eduardo, in the name of religion, or, or in the name of God, where are the limits? Are you in favor of killing terrorists in the name of religion?

Well, let me just say, say specifically that there is a political aspect to the way food is raised and produced. There is a political aspect to the reality of factory farms. And you, as a citizen, whether you are a believer or not, you can have some, a sense of responsibility. This is stuff that is being done in our name as citizens of a certain country, and we could say, "We don't want to do that anymore." And then you and I, as believers and readers of the Bible, we can travel to Nineveh with the prophet Jonah, and he, and see how he sits there and is so aggrieved that Nineveh wasn't destroyed. And then here God say to him that in Nineveh there are 120,000 people who do not know right from left, and also many animals. So we have a theological incentive to, to do better by, with the, by, by the non-human creatures in the world. Thank you very, very much, Eduardo, and Siggy, for the, for the response. I think we're going to move on to the next question. Um, have you noticed, guys, that there's 189 participants on here? I think I saw 100. Um, this, this topic, Siggy, is definitely, uh, uh, timely. It's, Lauren, can I interrupt you? Can I interrupt? Say, yeah, I just want to say, I am so grateful that Lauren and that Adventist Today allowed me and trusted me to do this topic. I'm so grateful for that, because I have tears in my body over these matters.

Well, you know, we appreciate you being, being here and, and the sincerity. Um, it's, it's, uh, very, very meaningful. So thank you very much for, for, uh, uh, giving us this opportunity. Lauren, um, you've got a question or a comment?

Yeah, just so you know, there's another 20 or 30 who are watching on Facebook as well. That's right. That's right. This is a really good topic. I, I think in terms of, uh, factory farming and meat and, uh, the environment overall, uh, this is just my impression, Siggy, that Adventists fairly early on became more personal ethicists than community ethicists. We, we very early on asked the question, not "Is this right to do?" but "Is this right for me to do in God's eyes?" And, uh, that probably would be expected of a group who, who grew out of the birth of the Evangelical movement, the, uh, the Second Great Awakening, that we would be, uh, very interested in our own salvation as opposed to the salvation of the world. And then we add to that that we're very interested in Jesus coming again. And I know Adventists have been accused of saying, well, it's all going to hell anyway, so we might as well just leave it. I haven't actually heard Adventists say that. Um, well, well, rarely, rarely. I've heard a few say that, but I don't think that's really what's motivating us. I think what's motivating us is again, this sense of, uh, uh, personal and, and maybe church identity. Which leads me to my question. I, um, noted your quotation from Reinhold, or I'm sorry, I get the two Niebuhrs mixed up. They were brothers, after all. Um, that "the unselfishness of individuals makes for the selfishness of nations," and his rather strong condemnation of patriotism. I have seen something. I haven't seen a lot of patriotism when I was a young person growing up in the church, but I did see some. But more often than not, well, actually, I'm seeing a lot going on right now at Berrien Springs Village Church. They are unashamedly political. They're not even making apologies for it. They just come right out and talk about it from the pulpit. But what I've seen more often is Adventists having a sort of patriotism about ourselves, a, a, a sense of inward selfishness, our group. Um, and it is very much parallel, Siggy, to to patriotism on the national level. Our church is right. Our church is the only true church. Our church is the, the church that has the message for the last days. Um, when I wrote this week about going to another church on Sunday, most people, because of our group, the, the, the thinking of most of our readers were supportive. But there are a few people who came on and just said, "No, this is wrong. You should not go to, you should not worship on a Sunday. You should not join with another church. It's Babylon." And so, is it any, I guess my question, Siggy, is, is it any less harmful for us to be, uh, completely devoted to being Seventh-day Adventists at the cost of everyone else out there in the world? Is that defensible? Is that something that we need to rethink? This, this sense of, "We are Adventists. We have God's message. We have the identity. We are it."

Well, big, big question. So, uh, and, and I think there are two, the, the two sides to it are, are legitimate concerns. But so, my, my plea here is really that, that I am pleading for things that are Adventist tenets. You could say they are, you know, they, they are in possession of everyone. There are many people who care about global warming today, and, and many, many people who care about factory farming. Uh, but so if I claim now that they are also Adventist tenets and part of a theology, of Sabbath theology, of the Seventh-day, then they are neglected Adventist tenets. Then then we are saying, "Oh, we are Adventists. That's wonderful." But it isn't so wonderful because the Adventism that we espouse is so narrow and so, so, so absent from the world that it wants to, to improve in, in a way. So, so I, you know, you also mentioned something about our ethos or ethics, that we have been more interested in personal issues, personal piety, personal health. Now, the issue is planetary health. And in the global, sort of ideology of people who think about health, they see a, a strong link between personal and planetary health. And I am so happy to have discovered some years ago, many years ago, you, I'm sure many of you have heard this, this shared, but Ellen G. White was in Australia for nine years in the 1890s. And in 1896, she wrote a letter to her friends in America, Ben Maxson, who was a doctor, and his wife, I think she also was a doctor. And she shared an experience she had had at a camp meeting in Australia, uh, that is interesting both for its, uh, ecology and for its humanism. Because Ellen White wrote to the Maxons that, "When the selfishness of taking the life of an animal to gratify a perverted appetite was presented to me by a Catholic lady, weeping and kneeling at my feet, I saw everything in a new light. And I decided, I am no longer going to have to, to frequent the butcher. I am no longer going to have the flesh of animals on my table." Here, it isn't personal health anymore. It is animal health. You know, the, it is the well-being of the animal that seems to be the motivation. That is what the Catholic lady shared with Ellen G. White. And Ellen G. White, you know, amazingly concedes that she had a thing or two to learn from this Catholic lady. You know, and, and the, the gravitational points for lifestyle issues, including, you know, choosing a plant-based diet in the world today, cannot be personal health anymore, cholesterol levels, whatever. But it can be how to treat non-human creatures, and it can also be global warming. Now, I don't know of any, of any statement by the church on, uh, I could be wrong. They, they could have said something about how to treat animals. I do know that there was a statement on ecology, uh, I think that was, uh, in the 1990s, rather tepid, um, not, not very resounding. And, and not that a statement is the main thing, but at least the church has acknowledged it, it, in one little small statement. I don't know if you're aware of that one.

Yeah, I, I, I have seen a little, but, you know, it has been tepid, to put it mildly. Yeah. Yes. Thank you. Excellent, excellent, uh, back and forth there. Uh, we'll continue with our friend Gina, who, um, never fails to get me thinking from different angles. Uh, we, we meet almost every week and talk. And, uh, I'm wondering what, what question she has for us today. Uh, let's see. Are you unmuted?

Yes. I'm, I'm going to disappoint you today because I'm actually more interested in a tangential comment that you made about Loma Linda not being a real university. And I'm interested to know how you think Loma Linda and other Adventist institutions distinguish themselves from other universities, or where they come, where they fall wanting. And, and whose agenda do you think it is to keep it that way? Is it the General Conference, or the Education Department, or just a collection of

Church people, I'm interested in your thoughts on this. The kindest thing I can say about that is that I think that it is force, it is the force of habit. You know, that we have had a certain way of doing things, and we have kept doing that, just kept doing it.

So at Lolinda, we have a Wednesday Chapel every week. It's mandatory attendance, and we have more than 50% of our students are non-Adventist. But our Chapel is a worship service, you know, where someone comes in and and and talks about Jesus, uh, you know, for for the chapel hour, and and it is praise songs and so on. And and I think faculty do not attend because it is a rehash of things, so they are not prioritizing it. And I don't think students attend except in body. In spirit, they are somewhere else because they sit with their iPhones and iPads and study because what they have not, it isn't interesting enough to keep their attention.

Now, here is something that I think would be interesting enough to keep their attention. If we did it, that would be to invite Matthew Scully, who wrote the book *Dominion*, and share a value-centered message. A famous person who has a role in the in a bigger arena, and bring that voice to Loma Linda. There is convergence between his agenda and ours, and in some ways, he is ahead of us. He is like the Catholic lady kneeling at Ellen White's feet who has something to say to Adventists that would improve their witness. Same thing with Daniel Boarin. He would have been in Loma Linda long ago, and everyone would have known who he is for his interest in in the rise of Christianity and his concern for issues in the contemporary world.

And I have sent a list, I have written letters to our administration on a number of occasions here, here, and suggested that we make that we do a university thing for that chapel hour. We have a values-centered, uh, message that will be a sort of horizon-expanding for our students, and it would be so interesting that just about every single faculty member at Loma Linda would want to attend. They wouldn't want to miss it. That's what I have in mind when I say, you know, insularity and and the. But I, I, I could say worse things about why I think it is that way, but I will only say it is force of habit, bad habit.

Interesting. I, I just wanted to respond to Lauren's comment about ecumenism and the church. And I think, I, I have referred to this in the past, and I think 1 Corinthians 1 verses 10 to 17, he talks about the dispute between members of the churches, or Chloe's people, people arguing about, "I came to Christ through Paul," "I came to Christ through Apollos," or "I came to Christ through Cephas." And he says, "Is Christ divided?" You can't divide the Christ. The Christ of the cross. In the Adventist kingdom, have talked about, "Are we remnant people? Are we not remnant people?" Is it important for us to make that distinction? Do we discern ourselves from the people of First Corinthians who are saying, "I came to Paul through A, I came to Paul through Ellen White, I came to Paul through Cephas"? I mean, do we feel a necessity for dividing? And and the Donald Trump movement is definitely about dividing. I think that when Christ is is divided, nobody benefits. I think we can learn from each other. That's all.

Well, thank you very much. You know, you did not disappoint whatsoever. Uh, in fact, uh, you, you definitely lived up to your, um, your, your tendency to really have provocative ideas and and push us in in in the right direction. So thank you for those reminders and and, uh, for triggering our thinking. George is next on the lineup, and then we'll go to David and Shirley. And next to Carsten, I'll ask for more hands. Uh, this is, wow, we're going up in participants. So, uh, this is really heating up. Thank you very much, everyone, for your participation. Over to George.

Yeah, thank you for your, your presentation. I admire your bravery in bringing up this issue and, uh, facing it. Um, the, the *Spectrum* published a few days ago a review on a book, *The Violent Taken by Force*. And I actually acquired the book and read the book because the issue is very, very important. And I learned a lot from that. I don't think Adventists in general have any idea of what is, uh, going on in terms of the content of the book. It focuses on the role of NAR, the New Apostolic Reformation, started with Peter Wagner, and nowadays under the leadership of Dutch Sheets. I wonder if you are aware of this movement, how much you are aware of that, and because this movement is behind Trump's election very, very clearly. Now we have the facts. And, uh, if you, if you have any, any awareness of that, any studies done, if you have any comments in relation, relation to what you just presented today, if there's any connection there that concerns you, and what the concern would be. Thank you.

Yeah, and so I have not, I have not read that book. I am aware of it, and I, and I think it is very relevant to to the situation, to the political, you know, what is happening. There are there are many books on the, the, let's see, you're books on on how the religious, you know, the, the way the shift or the growing influence of of religion and politics in America, and the, and the Evangelical embrace of Trump, that are, what should I say, the, in some ways, they are the short view of what had happened, you know, going back to the 1980s, going back back to to, uh, Ronald Reagan, and the embrace of the evangelicals of Reagan. So on. But a longer view, longer view, and where there is a more sort of deeper theological script for all of these things, that you will find in Donald Haron, Atkinson's three books, where he traces the history of of dispensationalists from its Anglican roots in Ireland, and how that was exported to America, and how it led to what we call, what he calls, the Americanization of the Apocalypse, leading giving a sort of prophetic, eschatological script for for the way things, the way the world is seen, and with a huge role for for Israel there, and and the success of that. So Adventists talk about themselves as the remnant, the end-time remnant, but the dispensationalists, they talk about themselves that way too, and they talk about themselves, uh, in a sense of entitlement, because the eschatological dispensationalist remnant, they used to be the ruling minority, the ruling colonialist minority in Ireland in its day, and they have retained that sense of entitlement, you know. So in some ways, you could say the notion of minority rule in America today, and the Christian entitlement here, is is also a carryover of that ideology. But I am definitely going to read the book, you, *The Violent Taken by Force*. It has been on my list, but I haven't read it yet. I thank you for your comment.

Yes, just one detail about the book. I had several questions with this chaos in America that Trump has caused, and finally, when I read the book, I could connect the dots very easily. It was very, very good, very helpful to see what is going on now. So I highly recommend to everyone. Actually, every Adventist should read it. The GC should have reviewed this book and should tell the members about it. The GC is thinking about now, they're working against women's ordination and they, the non-straight people, and they are missing a big, big boat in the political arena.

Thank you. I agree. I agree with you 100%.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you very much. That's another, uh, benefit of HSS. We get to, uh, build our reading lists. David and Shirley are next, and, uh, you are unmuted, so go for it.

Right, can you hear me very well? Great. Um, what a fun topic. Thank you so much for spending your time with us here, for putting this presentation together. It's clear from the comments we just touched on the tip of the iceberg on so many deep topics. Now, I'll have to admit, from the very beginning, I was a little bit, um, whiplashed from your two main points. We started off with, uh, animal farming, you know, factory farming of animals, and the immorality of that. And then we jumped into the, uh, Middle East politics, Zionism, Palestinian struggles. Um, and they, at first, just seemed so diverse. And, and the more I pondered the comments that you made and others made, the closer and closer those two became. And, you know, particularly, you think of animal farming, where all the resources into the animal are fully controlled, their food, you know, basic necessities, taking care of their waste, but the basic right of the animal to exist as an animal is denied. And it's denied because not just benign neglect, it's deliberately minimizing the value of the animal as anything other than a food source. Um, and then all of a sudden, the synergy with the Palestinian situation pops up, where for all intents and purposes, for 40 years, the Palestinians have been factory-fed. They've been gated off. Their resources have been carefully fed to them, enough to keep them viable and alive, but isolated and minimized, and deny the humanity of the group. We've been factory farming Palestinians. Now, you can't go either way, down either of those roads, without eventually running into problems. And, uh, the humanity of the Palestinians finally is now becoming more aware to people. So, so there's a, a real synergy between the two parts that you laid out. And for me, the Christian imperative is, how would Jesus view these these groups? He wouldn't view animals the way factory farmers do. He wouldn't view Palestinians the way that they have been forced to live. And I, I think that's what we need to acknowledge. And, and I appreciate the fact you brought that out. Thank you very much.

So, I, I chose my topics because I think those two specifics, because I think they are, they are important. I also chose them because because I'm interested in many other things. You, the American Judiciary, the many other issues, you know, the freedom of the press, and all kinds of things that are, you know, going on now. I'm interested in all of those. But on the two topics I chose, I could say something with certainty. I didn't have to speculate too much. I, I could, I, I don't need to hypothesize. So that's why I chose, also why I chose those two. And I, I appreciate your comment about the relationship between between them. There is a compassion deficit in religion. There is a compassion deficit in Christianity. There is a huge compassion deficit in American Christianity in a general way. It is, that's also shown in the extremely harsh sentencing system of Americans, where 200,000 people are incarcerated in America with life without the chance of parole. And the common element theologically in the topics I shared, the two specifics, is divine compassion. Divine compassion for the 120,000 people in Nineveh that the prophet Jonah would be happy to see destroyed, and divine compassion for the many animals in Nineveh that didn't even occur to the prophet Jonah. So there is, you know, there are many issues in Adventist theology, anthropology, eschatology, Sabbath theology, that all inform a more robust way of of engaging with the world. But the most important of those things is theology. It is the eclipse of the compassionate God. And we need to do better on that one.

Here, here. Thank you.

Siga, um, I am going to, uh, pass things over to Lauren, who wants to make a brief announcement about next week. And then we'll get, just, just a quick introduction to all of you. I have Lena Taves on here with me, and I have unmuted Lena. And Lena, I don't know if you heard as we got started, Dr. Taves' great admiration for both you and your husband. And so I want to introduce you to everyone and, uh, make sure everybody knows that Lena is going to be speaking next week. I, I seem to recall you were going to also, uh, continue your discussion that you read the paper about having to do with the spirit, is that correct?

Yes. Um, thank you, Lauren. I appreciate your introduction. I did not hear what Dr. Taves said, but we appreciated his visit to Union Adventist University, uh, a couple of weeks ago. Thank you for coming. And we have really good reports and, uh, appreciation for your presentations. Um, yes, I just ran, the reason I didn't hear the introductions and I logged in a little bit late, because I taught on the spirit right across the street here at, um, our church, at the college church. I taught a lesson on the spirit in John. So yes. Um, um, I don't know, my topic may not be as exciting as today's topic, but, um, it is exciting to me in the sense that, um, without the spirit, what Siga is talking about, I feel like lots of things are almost impossible without the driving force of the spirit. And, um, it's His, her presence in our lives. And, um, I will be expanding a little bit on the doctrine of progressive revelation, and why we have been neglecting it for so many years. And that has to do a lot with the spirit, and a little small touch on eschatology, but mostly on the holistic experience of the spirit and the progressive revelation of the spirit that we haven't been attuned to and haven't been paying attention to. This is, um, a very small introduction summary about, um, next week's presentation.

Thank you. So pleased that you're going to be doing this. We love, we love two things that we love at ADV today. One is featuring new teachers. And we, we particularly love when we can show that our female professors, teachers, pastors have so much to offer us. And we want to, we want to make that point to the church. And so you're, you're, you're not a, you're not a token, but you are important to make that point. Dr. Taves, thank you so much. And, uh, I'll, I'll look forward to next week.

Thanks. Definitely. I'm glad we paused to, uh, to highlight that and to look forward. So thank you very much. We look forward to your presentation, uh, very much. Carsten, you are next in the lineup, and, uh, question or comment. Let me see. Let me get you to unmute. There we go. You've, you've got the floor.

All right, thank you. Well, now we had a Norwegian presentation with a Swedish moderator, and then, uh, a Dane from the sides coming with cheap shots. See me, I remember I sat in the nominating committee of the West Nordic Union back in the early 1980s, and your name came up as a proposed name for the president of the West Nordic Union. I don't know if you were aware of that or whether you were offered that, and I think you refused it. Thought that was quite an interesting little thing there. Uh, I agree with the presentation in terms of, you know, the injustice about animals and the consequences of climate change and our responsibility as stewards of the earth. However, I was, uh, naughty enough or provocative enough to write in the comments that I felt the presentation was somewhat unbalanced, and I even was, uh, evil enough to write that some of the sources were cherry-picked. And I probably should give a little bit of flavor on why I write that. Um, ever since Trump got elected, or even before he got elected in 2016, uh, having grown up in Michigan, at going to Andrews, and having also lived in Texas down south where you say "y'all," it's, and then returning to Denmark for many years now, it's given me a broad transatlantic perspective on things. And one of the things that is so important to me personally, and I've spent a lot of my life in the past eight years trying to build bridges between these two silos where we each talk in our own echo chamber. We have an *Spectrum* Adventist-day echo chamber, and there's a *Falken 7* echo chamber, and there's a Silver Spring echo chamber, and we just don't understand how to communicate. And that really pains me. When I worked in Texas at the employer in a high technology company, the CEO had a policy that the company does not take political positions. It does not engage in political discourse. The main purpose of the company is to create products that make, via its technology, the world safer, more efficient, more energy efficient, and so on, without getting on the any of the political bandwagons. And I think that's a very healthy thing for a company to do. That after I retired, I've been back in Austin a couple of times and met with the CEO and other key people at the company who I loved working with and were very conscientious and and good people. And I discovered they were tied, tied in the wool Trump fanatics who believed in conspiracy theories and all kinds of stuff. And I had a long dialogue with one of them, uh, via chat. And the interesting thing was, finally, he said, "It would be nice if somehow we could each get out of our, you know, rabbit holes and learn to talk with each other." And this was from a die-hard Trump supporter. And when I listen to our conversation here, we are in our bubble. We are talking from from our perspective. And I think one of the things that has resulted in the US election as it has come about is that the people in the US, the lower classes, are hurting. They can't make ends meet. They're provided the worst food on the cheapest end of the food chain, which is unhealthy and fattening. And when I look at it from the European perspective, I see many injustices in the American society. The injustice of the American healthcare system, which is strongly discriminatory. The injustice of the way you gerrymander the voting districts, the barriers that are created to be able to vote, where Republicans and Democrats alike are just as good in making sure to make it so hard to vote that the minorities and the poor people have a hard time being registered. We cannot understand that in a country like Denmark. We get a postcard mailed when there's an election where my name is on it, I'm a citizen of Denmark, and that is my credential to go down to vote. Everybody who's a citizen gets that. And it's these type of things that concern me. I appreciate your concern, Siga, but the hunger in the world, the poverty in the world, where the church has done a lot, where ADRA has done a lot, I'm sorry, but these are much more significant issues than the pigs. Also, uh, the suffering in the Middle East. We like to take sides. We like to accuse people of taking sides. It's intractable conflicts that have been going on for years. I don't know what we can do to stop that suffering. But I'm basically appealing that we also, in our liberal bubble chamber, learn to speak in a way so that if some of our conservative friends were listening in, that they would have something that they could relate to. And I don't think that's the case right now. Sorry.

Yeah, so let me just say that I do not think that I am speaking inside the liberal bubble chamber. I have been, if in the world I live in here, I haven't heard anyone talk much about the subject I talked about, factory farming, or the situation in the Middle East. So I think I have chosen two specifics that are quite significant. And the consumption of animal foods in the world is the greatest driver of climate change there is. It is bigger than the use of fossil fuels. So it isn't a sort of sideshow, even with respect to climate change. I talked about it for an ethical reason, and and because there are strong biblical, uh, inducements to care about, uh, about the use of of animals and factory farming. So I do not think that my example is going to lose out as a, as a significant priority. And the specifics you mentioned about healthcare in America, about people who live from paycheck to paycheck, and so on, that has not been as much a liberal concern as it ought to be. And since you care about that, and I do too, to an extent, those are issues that the current president-elect is likely to make worse. But I do not want to, I should have said, I should have said, uh, when we started our discussion, I should have said that I would prefer if our discussion centered on the two specific issues I said I talked about, about which we can talk with some degree of certainty, uh, rather than going global. But if I register a slight disagreement with you, I do so. Thank you.

Right. Well, I, I apologize for taking the train off the track then. Uh, I would mention that in Denmark, the animal farming things and the Palestinian-Israel conflict is extremely high on the agenda in Denmark. It's something that gets a lot of press and a lot of attention. So this is an example again where there are geographic differences in terms of the issues that we discuss.

Well, thank you, my fellow Scandinavians, for modeling, uh, very polite disagreements. But, but I think, I think we, you, you essentially agree on on the main points there. I, it reminds me of, um, when I tried to get, um, well, you talked about talking about echo chambers, and I, I remember I was at Andrews, and I tried to get the Danish president of of the university to take, uh, my hyper, hyper liberal at the time side as, uh, and I think he said something like, "Well, I don't want to be the guy from the little country lecturing the big country on on how to behave." But, and then he, and then he went into, uh, a fairly, fairly liberal position. But anyway, we are, okay, Gerald is next in the lineup, and, uh, looking forward to a very, uh, thought-provoking comment or question. I always feel yours are great, Gerald. Yes, you're unmuted.

Thank you. Uh, I'm on. So, Siga, thank you for bringing the topic up. I, I share those concerns as you presented. However, I'm, I'm reaching out to ask you to expand the concern a little bit, because I feel guilty. When Trump was elected in '16, he said the stock market's going to zoom all the way to 30,000, and everybody thought he was an idiot. And my retirement funds grew exponentially. I loved it. The same thing's happening now. Should I feel guilty about loving what's going to happen in the next four years, my retirement funds, because I think they're going to keep growing? He's kind to industry, that's dangerous for my environment, but, you know, I'm going to die inside of 20 years, in all likelihood, and I need that retirement fund. What's wrong here? Wide-ranging comments. Talk to us. Speak to us about retirement funds, please.

Well, just, you know, thank you for your, for your view here. So, genuine conservatives do not think that that political leadership changes economic parameters that much. There was a huge economic collapse during the second Bush administration that had something to do with a deregulated financial market. So the collapse that happened at that time had a political context. But generally, uh, uh, conservatives think that that that who is president isn't the main determinant for for political fortunes. The downturn economically, uh, in, uh, the first, you know, 2021, '22, '23, had a lot to do with the pandemic and the disruption of the supply system and so on. This is elementary stuff. And I actually agree with Ron Brown, Brownstein, who used to be a commentator in the *LA Times*, who said that this was a very conventional election because people were dissatisfied with the economic situation, and they voted for another party. And the same thing happened, has happened again and again in electoral cycles in the US, with the expectation that the next one will be, you know, remedy the situation. I hope you and me live for another four years, and we will talk again then, and see what happened to your retirement funds, you know, and what, and whether there is whether the rise in your financial fortunes can be ascribed to the current president-elect. Let's talk in four years.

All right. I'm, I'm rooting for your, uh, retirement funds, Gerald. Um, and, uh, over, over to, uh, over to one of my good friends here at Newbold. We were in the same Christmas concert this morning. Johnny, if you could unmute, I've asked you to unmute. Hopefully, you got the notice over there. Brilliant. Yeah, you're unmuted. The floor is yours.

Yeah, thank you very much for your presentation. Thank you, beyond. Um, we have, uh, those of us who lived quite long, um, and those of us who live in Europe, we have become quite skeptical and quite blasé about politics, especially in our parts. There are many parties, and it would be for us a waste of time to really go crazy about one or the other, specifically about American politics. We hear on these Zoom meetings and so on. We have lots of friends in the States and so on. And after all, we are Seventh-day Adventists. We are very, we've seen it all before. We've been told that President Kennedy was going to introduce Catholicism and Sunday law. Then it was Jimmy Carter on the Bible swearing. Then we watched those presidents who fought the wars in Vietnam or wherever, and just waited for the election time to pass over so that they then would try to stop the war. Lyndon Johnson, Nixon, said he was going to stop the war, but he waited because the election was near, near nearing. And we watched Bill Clinton, total disgrace, in good economics. And we watched Bush, I will not say it. And now we, we saw Trump in the first place. We, we didn't see that Obama did anything for the black people specifically. And, uh, maybe in healthcare, I, yes. And so we are very skeptical. And we, and we've seen our Ben Carson, is it Ben Carson? We didn't, we didn't think much of it. And can you see us as Adventists really shying away from politics? And you said that we ignore politics at our peril. You quoted some, yeah.

I quoted, uh, the president of the Society of Biblical Literature, who is an expert on the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. And those books are very political books. So there is politics in the Bible, and there is there is the Bible in politics. And the Bible is now a huge factor in politics in in America, in relation to the Middle East. It is a factor in America in a way it isn't a factor in European realities, because very few people in Europe, except for for for Pentecostal Christians, think that there is a biblical script for what should happen, you know, how you draw borders in the Middle East. That is unique to America. That is unique to America. And it is a factor that is likely to be considerably more visible, more prominent in the next four years, because now constraints are off. And, and yes, you can say there is one good thing about Trump, and that is that he acts on his impulses. He doesn't hide it. He is not a subtle person. So you get what you, you know, what you see is what you get, I suppose. But, but this skepticism one has, and the sort of alarm tendencies that you have had about American politics in the past, that's true. That is real. You know, to say that what we have now is just more of the same, and another fluctuation of those kinds of of of issues, I, I rather doubt it. But, you know, I hope, I hope the American institutions will be resilient enough to withstand the kind of stress that you are likely to have now. And, and I do think that there, there is something quite exceptional about the current, the current situation. It was exceptional that for the first time in the history of this Republic, a president refused to agree to the peaceful transfer of power. That is an issue of citizenship, not so much of religion, but it is an issue, nevertheless. So, but I, I want to retreat back into my main two topics, about those things where I feel that I can do something from within my Seventh-day Adventist identity and make that seem relevant to world realities. Those, that's why I chose the two specifics that I chose.

Thank you. Thank you, Johnny, and thank you for the response, Siga. Um, I am going to read a question from Betty, who is unable to, um, verbalize it. She's, uh, has a health challenge right now. K, and then, and then we will get to Dan. I hope you don't mind the, uh, uh, question, Dan. So, can you, um, speak to the ministries like Common Reason with Tim Jennings and Tennessee, who quotes Genesis 8:22 as biblical proof against climate change, and promotes the moral case for fossil fuels by Alex Epstein? Uh, yeah, would you, would you mind speaking to that?

I would mind speaking to that, yes. I do, I do not believe in such use of scripture. But I did say already in my comments that even if you say there is no climate change, and even if you want to burn and drill, baby, drill, and and use fossil fuel, fuel till the cows come home, then you still have to reckon with the ethical issues in relation to factory farming, and you have to reckon with the ethical issues in regard to taking care of the well-being and the legitimacy of all human beings, including in relation to the conflict in the Middle East. So I do not want to dignify, uh, that, uh, interpretation. I have heard that he has said that, and I, if, if there is such use of that Bible, you know, okay, I say good night and good luck.

Fair enough. All right, uh, we're moving on to Dan, who I'm asking to unmute. Looking forward to hearing the, uh, other jet speak as well.

Thank you very much. Uh, it's, um, tempting to, to jump in there. There hasn't been enough hands to fill up a, a full session, so take the chance to get in and, and express a few ideas. When I saw Dr. Taves' name on the, uh, the description of the, uh, the topic, more than just the topic itself, I was impressed by his ability to, or his, his record of conquering, you know, at least two of the three great learned professions, medicine and theology, and I suspect he's got a good handle on the law as well. So, his, his position, his, uh, descriptions, and should be, should be listened to. And, and indeed, I think we've done that. I, I expected we might have some controversy in this, uh, this discussion, because politics in the US is very, uh, confrontational currently. But I see, and I forget, there was just a, um, a comment in the, and I can't find it right now in the chat, about how US presidents are given way more credit and blame for what happens in the country than they deserve. And I think that's absolutely true. I think we'll see. I'm, I consider myself traditionally an economic conservative, not a social conservative. I, what didn't support, uh, Trump, and I wouldn't because of the character of the man, and what he's shown in both illegality and inability to hold to a, a good position. U, going for what he believes gains him power, money, and, and authority, rather than what's good for the country. Just a personal opinion. But I, I'm not afraid of the next four years, like it's been expressed in a couple of other folks. Not just because the president doesn't have as much power as people give him credit for, especially in a divided Congress and a severely divided country. There would not be a takeover, civil war, or, you know, police state, martial law instituted in this country. That's not going to happen. And also, the second, uh, figure, the second thing is this represents a second four-year administration from for the for Trump, and that's always less effective for a president than the first, uh, four years, or even the first year or two of a new administration. So I'm not worried about that. But I do think, um, we have another thing that I think is an issue is the length of the political process, which is stressed, stretched out to more than two years before each election, rather than relatively quick turnarounds like in, uh, the UK or maybe some of the other European countries, where the issues of government change come up rapidly, people make a decision, learn about it, rather than getting hammered to the point where they turn off. And we have a huge number of what we call low-information voters that are voting with emotional, uh, considerations rather than policy, policy considerations. That's their right. But in the same token, I think we suffer for it. The other thing is the candidates in our country, the best people in the country avoid the political maelstrom and the difficulty in running and the attacks on them and their family and those that they love. This is just all rambling, but I would encourage anybody else to jump in the conversation because this is a chance to, I think, a safe place to, um, to express your opinions. Dr. Conrad has definitely laid out some interesting information, and Carsten brought a couple of, uh, issues up that maybe a balance is needed. I think that that's probably true. I'm not, I have sure I have a question for that, but I do applaud the, uh, the chance to get into a political sphere, which I didn't expect to happen on this, on this forum. And I don't think it needs to be off-limits. Maybe in, in church, in the pulpit, it's off-limits, at a more open discussion like this, where we can relate politics and current events into a religious context is welcomed. And I appreciate that. And, uh, a very good presentation. To the extent some people may disagree in some manner to it, I, I encourage them to, to voice their opinions here and now. Other than that, I'm, I'm happy to stand down and listen to what we have left. Thanks very much.

Thank you, Dan. Siga, do, do you want to respond to that? I mean, that was, um, that was a great comment and, uh, affirmation of your presentation and the discussion.

Yeah, so on the issue of balance, there is, we have 40 minutes. I have 40 minutes to make a presentation. I used more time than I should have. And so you cannot really expect balance. Maybe one could do better. But, but I prioritized a couple of things. They are not the whole story. The second thing is that there is no divided Congress now. There is the same party in president and House and Senate. And there is a recent Supreme Court ruling that is actually conferring presidential immunity on it, that almost seems monarchical for, you know, the traditions in America. So there are some, you know, major, major, major concerns here. But I, I, you know, I just want to retreat to my, my two main points and hopefully give them a standing that they may not have had as much as as they deserve. That's what I was hoping.

Oh, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for clarifying. I think, uh, Lauren is next here, and, uh, we've got a few more hands, and then we'll probably start wrapping things up.

Lauren. Yeah, I'll, I'll be very short because I do see some hands here and I want us to bring it to a close in time for you. Um, whenever I bring up anything about politics, and this has been true through my whole life as a pastor, and now my life as an editor, I get blasted. I mean, it's just like, you know, the one thing you dare not talk about is politics. Not only is the Old Testament full of politics, but the New Testament is full of politics. They were, they were wrestling with the, uh, the Emperor and Emperor worship. They were wrestling with not just one country, but multiple countries. And then the people who were Gentiles versus the people who were Jews. It was in, it was on the, the front of the agenda all the time. Politics. What are we going to do when the new, when, when the early Christian Church came in? What do we have for the first 300 years? Politics. What is, is the Roman Emperor going to say? And finally, when Christianity really grew, it actually had at least something to do with the Roman Emperor saying, "Hey, this is our new religion. Everybody get behind it." I don't know if it was as clear as apologist Bible studies on the Sabbath tend to say that Constantine changed the Sabbath to Sunday, and everybody suddenly started going to church on Sunday. I'm not sure it was that clear. Uh, but still, it was there. And, and we still look back and say, "Yeah, the Roman Empire, like the Christians, they started not liking the Jews, and so Christianity ended up being the big deal." And it was not only just that, Siga, it was that they turned around and said, "Anybody who doesn't accept the right politics is going to be persecuted." If you were an Armenian, you were going to be persecuted. There were actually statements to that effect, and the government is going to step in and do it. So help me to understand, Siga, how we ended up in the situation. I did a sermon at Glendale City Church, uh, couple, several months ago, where I said, uh, that we have, we can at least defend Christian ethics, Christian, uh, freedom, and Christian character. And I made that, that point. We can at least defend taking an interest in that. And yet, even that was controversial. Though those seem to be clearly places where religion and politics overlap, and yet that made some people upset. Talk to me about how I, as an editor, can take on, even allude to politics.

I think you are doing a pretty good job. So I think you are, you are very winsome in the way you do stuff. So, you know, I just wish we, I could be as winsome as you are. So I, I think you have just said that there is a lot of politics in the Bible. Think of a book like Amos. Amos is a political critique. It criticizes national politics and it criticizes international politics. That's right. And, and, and a Jewish commentator who has written a commentary on Amos, Shaul Paul, he talks about, uh, how the Jew, or how the culture at that time prioritized religious rights over human rights. Rights over rights, you know. And so that, that's a reality that is a staple of religion. You can just imagine the people in Amos' time saying, "We don't want you to talk about politics." And he will nevertheless talk about politics because it is political. His message has a political side to it. I say in my Sabbath book on issues of social justice that there are some issues that cannot be solved in the offering plate. You have to solve them at the voting booth. And I do think that is biblical. There is no, no, uh, that that follows. So our hesitancy to engage on these topics, yes, you know, that's difficult, yes, causes this and that. Well, the prophets in the Old Testament knew exactly the problem there because they engaged, and it wasn't exactly very popular, you know, but they did. Amos, Jeremiah, all of them, you know, do that. So, so I, I think we, we need to just, just, you know, keep it up. Yeah. We, we actually have an example in the history and read these texts and and allow them to to play out and and and the space that we abandoned to Tucker Carlson and other pundits, Rush Limbaugh, that have filled American minds with with resentment and and such a, you know, they are not quickly neutralized. That kind of stuff is not quickly neutralized. It takes at least 10 sermons to undo the damage of one session with talk radio, if I may just, you know, put it in a sort of tongue-in-cheek way, by which time those who need to hear it are gone. But, yeah, we have, we have at least one example in in the history, historical writings of David taking of a prophet taking on King David and saying, "You are unethical." And I don't know why we can't say that same thing about Donald Trump. Anyway, go.

Thank you very much. Thank you. And, uh, we have three, uh, questions or comments left. I'm going to, uh, repeat my announcement that we're in the midst of a, uh, year-end fundraiser. The most important fundraiser of the year. So help us reach our goal. It's $120,000 badly needed dollars to keep ADV going and growing. So we really, really appreciate your support for that. I'm going to repost the link. Doug and Teresa, you're next, and you've unmuted, so have at it.

Thank you. And, uh, to Lauren's conundrum comes to mind the old saying, "You can please some of the people all the time, or all the people some of the time, but you can never please all the people all the time." So that probably doesn't help solve the problem, but it does, does bring me to something that I think is for me easily forgotten. That not because I'm a scholar, but I've been told that politics actually breaks down into people. And if we're not concerned about people, then I guess we can be okay not being concerned about politics. And the distinction, perhaps, at least in my mind, is partisan politics, which is where sometimes we get highly polarized. And I appreciate the the concern expressed by Carsten and perhaps others that we do tend to reside in our silos. And I understand that. I've always had this quest in recent years for somebody to develop a platform for the party of Jesus. Start with a clean slate, a blank piece of paper, and define what would be the party of Jesus. And probably a good starting point for me would be the synoptic gospels, not so much Paul, but that seems to me to be the right direction. Instead of our aversion for where we don't want to go, how about deciding where we do want to go? And then the wrestling with the question of what do we do with that? I'm mindful, not because I'm a historian, but because I read a book called *Lost Christianities*, and we were just talking about the things that have gotten lost along the way, all the Christianities that have gone by the boards because they lost the battle for what Christianity would be defined as. And it makes me wonder, along with a comment made by my econ professor way back, he said, "We all vote with our dollars every day. More powerful than any other voting we do." And we can vote on factory farms. We can vote on factory farms. And so I think that's actually happening in smaller degrees and incrementally over time. But I also am reflective, and I realize, Dr. Taves, that there was a limit to what you could do at the time provided. But I was a little surprised you didn't bring up Adventist history. Because my limited awareness is that Adventists, a hundred plus years ago, were quite involved in politics. The politics of the war between the states, or the Civil War, depending which side of the Mason-Dixon you were on. And, and even issues that we thought were quite social, like alcohol consumption, and Adventists had a pretty clear position on that kind of stuff. And of course, religious liberty, which would be expected. But anyway, just my thoughts. Thank you for your presentation, very thoughtful, and I appreciate the emphasis you did have.

If I, if I could just say one, one thing here, that because, to, to, to tease out or lift up a theological issue, I said that there is a compassion deficit. That is true for the history of Christianity. That is true for, you know, things that have happened in the world. It is true in relation to factory farming. It is an egregious compassion deficit, and also issues in relation to oppression of other people. And, and, and it's also true about human nature. There is a compassion deficit in us, and there is a tendency of us to find theological legitimization for our lack of compassion. So now, one of the things that the current president-elect has promised to do is to launch a huge deportation of illegal immigrants, and also of legal immigrants from this country. The word deportation is a bad word in history. It's a you.

It's an almost poisonous word, uh, given that deportation was the word that made the Holocaust possible. And I just wonder what to do with people who are so ahistorical, so devoid of, yes, compassion, or and and that they cannot even understand that the word deportation carries, you know, overtones that are quite, quite risky. So we will see. You know, that's another issue. But, but my plea is really to to allow more space for a God who is on record as a compassionate God to humans, all humans, and to and animal animals, and to the Earth, and probably also in a very special way, compassion for those people who left their homes at some point, feeling that it was, that that for many of them, there was no choice. They had to to seek and try to find a better life elsewhere. I, I'm not ashamed to say that too. I appreciate that. And boy, for me, it, I have to boil it down to something simple. And there's two, two dichotomies, dichotomy that I've appreciated recently. It's, there are only two choices. It's not whether it's right or wrong, it's whether it's lifegiving or death dealing. And if it's death dealing, you may find some scripture somewhere that you think backs up death dealing. But I, I find a Jesus that says everything about lifegiving. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Doug, and thank you for the response, Sig. Uh, Carson, uh, you're back, and uh, we're curious what, what's, uh, what's on your mind. Uh, I appreciate the two previous comments. Doug's comment about politics, politics is related to people. That is, the people who are the customers of the government. And, uh, that segues nicely into, I think if we should make a new political party, we should not call it the Jesus party. We should call it the compassionate party, because that addresses the fundamental things in what Jesus said in taking care of the poor, and the hungry, and the naked, and so on. And that is, I, I greatly agree with this compassion deficit that there is in the world today.

Then a little add-on comment. Since I lived in an engineering community, uh, most of my life, uh, when I talk with fellow engineers, we sort of have a very, very different view on climate change. We recognize that there is climate change. It's real, and we don't deny it. And we also see that that curve of CO2 will continue to increase no matter what we do. There's been no change in the monia CO2 curve until this date at all. And therefore, we have to put on the compassion hat and says, what can we do to move people away from coastal flooding? What can we do to protect them from famine due to droughts and so on? That is, the compassionate priority should be there as the top priority, because the game is over. We're not going to reach our, our temperature goals. It's, it's just not realistic from an engineering standpoint. And, uh, if we put on the compassionate hat, we will have a totally different way of addressing things.

Us engineers also have a huge problem with the climate change religion. It is pro, it is promoted as a monotheistic religion that we are the sinners, and we are guilty of destroying the climate. And, uh, this is personified. If you look at K. Thunberg, she got a doctor of theology degree from the University of Helsinki in in Finland by starting a new world religion called the climate change religion. And we know that these type of things, often religion tends to be unnuanced. And, uh, this is something that us engineers also hate, because any engineering problem that has to be solved, which fundamentally is a climate change issue, has to work on multiple parameters at the same time. If you just go on one parameter, you end up sub-optimizing things. And, uh, I think the parameter we, as administ, if we should start a new party, we should be the compassion party. Thank you.

Kirsten, uh, Sig, are you nodding or are you, uh? I'm, I'm, I don't need to comment on that. That's good. Mayree, fine. Okay, excellent. Well, we agree on that one then.

Ed, final, final question or comment, and then I'll hand it back to Lauren for any, uh, final announcements. Are, okay? Uh, yeah, Ted, I want to say I appreciate your courage to address two very important topics. First of all, um, this idea of, uh, what's happening in in the Middle East, and that there's some inherent right for, for Israel to have taken over the West Bank and Gaza and all this stuff. I remember a little over a year ago, at Venice today, had a special, uh, Zoom prayer call after October 7th when war broke out between the Palestinians and, uh, Israel. And some of the presenters who were on there clearly stated that history had nothing to do with, uh, any inherent rights and so forth. And some of the history of the West Bank is that originally, like that's the best, uh, farming land in the whole area, and the best place to live and so forth, and very rich, uh, affiliated, uh, Jewish people internationally, not just from the United States, but from Europe and so forth, started to take over the West Bank. And then the, um, uh, military from, from Israel started to control the movements of Palestinians in the West Bank. So there's that history there.

Now, the United States, uh, I took a political science course 101, and the professor said, behind every war, there is an economic and financial motive. So follow the money. So if you follow the money, what's going on? You know, I'm not going to try and answer that one, but certainly that's part of what's going on there in the Middle East. And, and the military complex, uh, is what's promoting the United States since, uh, World War II to be in over 70 wars, and they've, they've basically lost everyone they've been involved in. You know, they had hoped to, uh, defeat Russia and Ukraine. I'm not taking sides. I think what Russia did was wrong, but, uh, all the efforts has not been able to stop Russia from, you know, sort of winning what they've set out to do. You know, that's a reality.

Now, in terms of climate or and the environment more specifically, you've touched on a something that's very much ignored. You know, the big focus has been on, on, uh, you know, getting the pollution down from vehicles, and that has been happening to some degree, at least. But, but factory farms or farming, just farming practices, at least in the United States and Canada, are huge contributors to, uh, it's not just the animals, it's the chemicals and all these other things that are being used in the, in the farming. And again, it's, it's money. It's, follow the money. You know, there's, they can produce, uh, chicken in, in, uh, that goes into the rotisserie in your local supermarket in, uh, 60 days or 90 days or some crazy thing, and they can do it for really cheap. And so that's what all this factory farming is about. So, so the thing is, follow the money. So a lot of the, uh, policies that come out of, uh, United States, Canada, many countries in the world, like who's really running the United States, for example? I mean, you talked about Trump and the impact of Trump, but who's really running the country? When we had COVID mandates in Canada and the United States, thousands and thousands of small businesses went broke because of the rules that came out, but yet all the big chains were able to sell groceries and other things, and they got much more, uh, uh, they got much richer. I mean, Amazon, uh, grew like exponentially. The, uh, the Walmarts and all the other big chains. I mean, some of these American chains are all over the world.

So, so I just want to make those comments. Is, uh, sometimes we forget that following the money is where, if you see what politics is doing, try and figure out where the money is. What, you know, what are the motives behind the scenes? You know, I forget the, the personal value of members of Congress, but they're all millionaires, pretty much, you know, and worth several million. But they entered there not being that wealthy. So what's going on behind the scenes? You know, they, they have, uh, special information, I guess, to play the stock market or whatever, and then they become very wealthy.

Thank you very much for the comment, Ed. Really, really appreciate it. And, uh, thank you, everyone, for a really stimulating discussion. I think we're all very appreciative to Siga for, uh, uh, you know, courageously presenting on something that was close to his heart and clearly something that, uh, interested a very large crowd. So thank you very much.

I make a little comment here. Yeah. So I agree with the, the comment that follow the money. But there are some convictions people hold that are not necessarily, uh, rooted in, in, in money. Some religious convictions are actually of that kind. And the tendency to use a religious script for the issues that are playing out in in the Middle East today is one, one example where I don't, I think the, the sense of what that script means is the contested issue. And that it is necessary to retreat from using scripts like that for for current political issues. And that is what is going to be a problem now in the next four years.

Then finally, let me say this. There is a reason to feel terrible about what is happening to the Palestinians and the pulverization of Gaza. That is really terrible. We have to find a way to relate to that without obscuring the singularity of the Holocaust. So I will go to my grave having invested some of my best years thinking about the meaning of the Holocaust and the, and the reality of evil in relation to the Holocaust. I plan to continue that until I go to my grave. But I also want to make sure there is space to deal separately, in some ways, with, you know, the, the evil that is done, and then still to retain, uh, a, a category, a unique category, if need be, for what happened during the Holocaust. Thank you very much for having me.