The Holy Post - 710: Iran, Immigration, & the Trouble with Certainty with Carrie McKean

The U.S. launched a military strike on Iran, and President Trump is framing it in moral

terms.

Phil, Caitlin, and Caitlin Beatty discuss the administration's shifting justifications

for war, and why Christians should be cautious of language that makes it easier to dehumanize

our enemies.

Then, they turn to the mass shooting in Austin, and the predictable scramble again to turn

tragedy into political leverage.

Then, Caitlin interviews journalist Carrie McCain about why distrust in public health and

debates over immigration are often far more complicated than our partisan categories allow.

Also this week, don't take selfies with snow leopards.

Well, sky's out of town this week, but if he were here, he would want you to know that

you only have two more days to take advantage of a one week free trial of Holypost Plus.

This week we have a bonus interview with Carrie McCain, where she talks about how returning

to West Texas and living through the COVID-19 pandemic expose the limits of her own stereotypes

and challenge her to hold her opinions more loosely.

It's a great interview.

You're going to want to check it out, along with all the other fantastic content we have

on Holypost Plus.

Go to Holypost.com slash plus to take advantage of the one week free trial.

Okay, here is episode 710.

Hey there, welcome back to the Holypost podcast.

I'm Phil Vischer.

I am here with No Sky.

No Sky.

No Sky today.

We got No Sky to tie me down, but we do have not one, but two, Caitlin.

Two, Caitlin, what a world.

When you trade out, you lose the sky and you gain a double dose of Caitlin.

Wow.

I would love if this was all prepping for just me talking twice as much, because so far

it seems like double Caitlin just means I'll just switch between these two seats back and

forth.

I'll impersonate a guy.

Yeah.

Wow.

That would be interesting.

That would be wild.

That would be wild.

It would be sunshine and then sadness.

We're here with Caitlin Shes.

You know, Caitlin Shes.

And you probably know her.

She hasn't been here in a while, but she's been on the show quite a few times over the

years.

Caitlin Beatty.

Hi, Caitlin Beatty.

Hi, Phil and other Caitlin.

Good to see you.

Always.

Good to see you.

Whatever.

You're on.

This happened at least once before when it was the two Caitlin's and me, maybe twice.

Yeah.

I think a couple of minutes.

It always confuses me for how to address one of you and not both of you will figure

it out at the same time.

I'm easily confused.

This will be good for you.

Two women, too.

It doesn't really, you know, rarely happens on the show.

I know.

I know.

I don't know.

And that's good for me.

I think occasionally two women is good.

Yeah.

Okay.

For me, though.

Yeah.

I think you can use some raining in.

Yeah.

Okay.

This will rain me in.

Yeah, we'll see.

Okay.

Okay.

You know Drew, Drew Dick.

You know Drew Dick.

I'm familiar.

Yeah.

There are too many boys that I'm not even going to do.

Thank you.

Because it's gross.

Thank you.

And I don't eat gross.

Good.

So do you not do news of the butt?

Occasionally, but I try not to do gross ones, but this was kind of a gross one and I wasn't

going to do it because I'm a classy guy.

I do, I do classy news of the butt news, new classy news.

So do you have like animal news or something?

I do have an animal news.

If you like one.

Yeah.

We have to play the theme song.

What's the news that you like the most?

Who's your favorite podcast post?

If it's breakfast, get your toasted sky, fill Caitlin in the holy post, sky, fill Caitlin

in the holy post, and sometimes other people.

Holy post is sponsored by World Relief as we've talked about immigration policies and

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Would you like some animal news?

Sure.

This is important.

And I think both of you could apply this to your personal lives, because you're both

on social media.

You both take selfies.

You both like this.

I was going to say, when have you seen a selfie?

Both like I'm making stuff up, just let me go, because let me start up my story better.

Okay.

You both love to see celebrities or interesting things and run up to them and take a selfie

with them.

Wow.

Okay.

I think I've described you both to a T.

Right.

You should not do that to a snow leopard.

Oh.

Can I just say that?

I wasn't going to, but I'd like to hear more.

Snow leopard, malls, skier, who approached it for a selfie.

Ah, malls as in kills?

No, did not kill.

Did not kill.

Just chewed on a little bit.

Oh.

Just chewed on a little bit of women's skiing in, um, I don't know how to pronounce this

province of China.

It was rushed to the hospital on the night of January 23rd after a snow leopard attacked

her.

While she's now in stable condition, there are photos and video of the attack from other

skiers, serve as a grim reminder to admire wildlife from a distance.

Well, if you see a snow leopard or a bear or a buffalo, why do so many people say,

so many of us have the instinct?

She got within three meters of the snow leopard to try to get her, her selfie.

Honestly, I feel like the most shocking thing about the story is that it was a woman.

Because I do feel like I hear this all the time and I go, I would never get close to that

wild animal.

And it's usually a man.

I've heard stories of women getting too close to buffaloed because, because you look

at everything, well, not you, because, you know, you're sensible, you're very smart.

Yeah.

You look at things like, oh, it's so cute.

Oh, look at the cute buffalo.

Yeah.

A lot of animals are bigger than you think.

They are.

They are bigger than you think and they're not as friendly as you've been led to believe

by movies.

A cartoon.

Yeah.

Yeah.

If you watch a lot of Disney movies, you're pretty sure that every animal wants to hug

you.

Yeah.

They're not so coupling.

Or sing you a song.

Mm-hmm.

And in reality, that's not accurate.

Mm-hmm.

Caitlin, other Caitlin, have you ever had a run-in with a wild animal that?

Mm-hmm.

That frightened you that could have gone, could have gone bad?

Well, how much time do you have?

I don't know.

Have you ever been attacked by a squirrel?

I've never been attacked by a squirrel.

I haven't been attacked by birds before, so I'm a bird watcher.

So in the spring, I love going out and, you know, looking for migratory birds.

Sure.

Something you learn quickly is not to get close to an area where birds are breeding or have

their nests, because they, certain species, become very protective, understandably.

It's their instinct to protect their young.

And so I have been dive-bombed by birds.

Oh, it's interesting.

For ten times.

Did you hear about the guy who trained harassed crows in his neighborhood while wearing a

mega hat to train the crows to attack anyone with a mega hat?

I don't condone that.

Oh, no word.

I don't think we should do that.

I don't think I'm happy to go on record.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Just put this in.

It's an interesting idea, but I don't condone it.

We should not train animals to attack people based on their ideological views.

Yeah.

Hot.

Although neo-nazis, maybe neo-nazis.

Like, you know.

Crows pecking them in their skinheads.

It's more the instrumentalization of God's creatures, even more than the harm of the human.

Like, the harm of the human concerns me, but it's also the, like, the method.

So you're worried about the crow?

The crow didn't ask for that.

And any emotional damage that would be done when the crow wakes up to realize he's been

enlisted as a total.

He's been used as a tool.

As a tool.

As a tool.

Mm-hmm.

Battle.

Okay.

I hear you.

Wait, Phil.

Have you ever been attacked by a wild animal?

No.

I don't think so, but I have lived a long and colorful life with many adventures in far

off countries.

Oh, wow.

Okay.

That's not true.

No.

Although I do have a scratch.

I was going to say, I have a scratch on my arm from my dog.

So there you go.

Okay.

We have to, um, the little kitty light would be blinking if it was working, but it's not

working.

So it's not blinking.

So, but I sense it now.

Yeah.

I've internalized.

The little kitty light so that I sense it when Mike wants it to be blinking to tell

me to move to the next story.

And it's a great story.

We're at war.

Did you hear about this?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I did.

It happened over over the weekend.

It's Monday.

We're now.

We seem to be, did you think that like this was a foregone conclusion that we were going

to attack Iran?

Trump had said it.

Yeah.

But it didn't seem like the country.

He's not a man of his work, but it did seem in the direction of the kind of thing he

would do.

Like it was something that he wanted to happen.

Yeah.

There had been reports for the last several weeks about this military buildup.

Yes.

And so, and it also seems to be the case, and I'm not a foreign policy expert, but the Trump

administration in its second term is really focused on things happening abroad, much to

the chagrin of a lot of Trump's base, because part of the platform for both of his administrations

has been kind of America first.

Why are we spending all of these resources on our own?

No foreign entanglements.

It's not in our interest to have this is this is a, you know, foreign entangle entanglement

of a large magnitude.

Yeah.

I think whether you think, you know, the attack was well reasoned or not, it seems like

we don't quite know even the Trump administration doesn't know what the fallout will be or is

not prepared to address the fallout on a, on a more ground level in Iran, there are

a lot of ex-pat Iranians in the US that are celebrating, because this guy is a bad guy,

and he's the reason sometimes their parents had to flee the country and, you know, travel

around the world and start new lives.

So there are a lot of people celebrating, and so you have mixed feelings, you know, like

what?

It's good that he's not there anymore, and there's a chance for, and look how happy these

people are.

So maybe that's a good thing, but at the same time, how often is this, the business we're

in of, you know, it just, we, we did it in Venezuela less dramatically, but I remember

when, when we took out Maduro and Venezuela, that's the guy's name, right, Maduro, I think

so.

I think so.

I think so.

That other Caitlin, you think is Maduro?

Yes.

Yeah.

And it wasn't, you know, I just tweeted, regime change is back on the menu, I guess,

but they're saying this isn't regime, regime change.

They're so, I don't, but they're also saying, hey, hey, Iranians rise up and change your

regime, right, right, yourself.

And I, so I don't really know how to think about it, and we still haven't heard a compelling

rationale for why it needed to happen, other than some that were blatantly false, like one

member of the administration saying they were two weeks away from enough nuclear material,

which was that they're not, or that they were close to an ICBM that could hit the US,

which they're not the best we know, they're years away from all that.

So I don't know.

I don't know.

And a lot of people on the right are like feeling very ambivalent.

Yeah.

I thought we were against this, but I don't want to be against our guy.

So maybe I'm for this.

Yeah.

I mean, particularly the vice president is now facing a lot of gotcha screenshots from

he wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal in 2023 saying basically no more foreign

wars.

So I think it shows the length to which Trump's loyalist supporters and members of his administration

will go to support and justify things that they are previously on record as not supporting

or justifying.

Yeah.

I mean, there's also the very, I don't know if we want to, you know, we're talking about

war and Iran.

If we want to get even darker or as dark we can talk about, is this a distraction from

the Epstein files?

Yeah.

My wife asked me that.

Which may be an excuse for a long time because it's going to take quite a while for journalists

to continue picking through the 3.5 million documents that were released a couple weeks

ago.

But I think the Trump administration can expect some people to kind of look a scance at

big consequential decisions like this and say, is this supposed to distract from

something else?

Right.

I don't know what to do with that.

Do you just ignore that or do you take it seriously or how do you, I don't know.

How do you assign motive when they started bombing boats in the Caribbean?

It was reportedly because internally they decided they wanted to take action and it needed

to be kinetic, meaning it needed to blow things up.

That was that not diplomatic blow things up action.

And it seems like the people in the administration really like, you know, those shows of force,

let's say there's a kind of focus on the optics of something, how something looks, how

it be.

The optics have been loud, something looks.

Yeah, the optics of seeing your cabinet members bench pressing rather than reading books

on.

And that's an image I'll never be able to get out of my mind.

Yeah.

This is like a very exaggerated version of something we've talked about a million times,

which is there was so much rationale in the, in every election that Trump has been

a part of to say, well, we just need to get things done.

The character of the person who gets it done doesn't really matter or their methods

or their temperament or their posturing doesn't really matter as long as they're for

our goals.

This is a great example of things that we said in the lead up to all of those elections,

which was you have no idea what kinds of catastrophes or risks or dangers will end up

being central to a presidency.

If you don't put someone in there that has the kind of character where you're not at

least constantly going, every presidency has the issue of is this distracting from something

else or another?

When you put someone in office who is that, you know, fickle and unprincipled, you're

going to end up in a situation where you both don't, you both don't know what they will

do for what reasons and you're not at all wrong for assuming some of the worst motivations

for those things.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

In reaction to that, there was what appears to be in reaction to that.

There was a mass shooting in Austin, the day before yesterday, a 53-year-old Senegalese

immigrant wearing a property of Allah shirt, shot up a bar popular with University of

Texas college students, two people were killed and also the shooter who was 53, been in the

U.S. for 20 years, was a naturalized citizen, had no criminal record.

But immediately, of course, people, every time there's a mass shooting, we try to figure

out, how can we work this to our, yeah, we fit it into our preconceived political ideas.

Chip Roy, Texas representative, immediately called on Congress to pass legislation that

he wrote that would halt nearly all legal immigration, Ken Paxton, the Attorney General

of Texas, called for no more Islamic immigration.

Senator Kornin of Texas, that radical Islam has no place in Texas and our country.

Governor Greg Abbott didn't call for a blanket ban on immigration, but he urged an end to

the current open immigration policies.

Now, again, this is someone who had been here for 20 years, came legally and naturalized

as a citizen.

Democrats in Texas, of course, called for more gun control laws.

Democrats' efforts have failed with Republican leaders instead, loosening firearm regulations.

Oh, you have more gun control laws.

We'll give you less gun control laws.

Ha, ha, see if you make that mistake again.

There's been so much, and you know, I'm on Twitter somewhat.

I didn't know if you knew that.

I was aware about me, but there's just an immediate blaming of Islam overall.

The entire religion, all that there should be no Muslims in the U.S., particularly Texas,

which I guess has a growing Muslim population and locals successfully voted to block the

construction of a new mosque.

They didn't want it, so you can't build it here.

Um, Kaelin, other Kaelin.

Yeah.

Do you, do you follow this at all, just the kind of the, the moods against various out

groups and, and which one, which one should we follow moods, which one should we demonize

today?

I, it has really become axiomatic, unfortunately, just given the high rate of mass shootings

in the U.S., it has become axiomatic that any time there is a mass shooting, there's

an immediate attempt to discover the person's motives, but also discover their identity.

In this case, you know, the, the shooter was kind of explicitly stating their motives.

I think from their, their clothing, but in other cases, we don't, we don't have a clear

motive, or the person doesn't fit into neat ideological categories, or they're not necessarily

don't seem to be ideologically motivated.

Yeah.

Um, I do have to kind of do some self reflection regarding that impulse, because I remember

in 2018, there was a shooting in Texas, where the shooter had been found to espouse all sorts

of kind of trumpy, maga, fueled hate toward immigrants and posted things on the internet.

Yeah, the El Paso shooting at the Walmart.

And yes, and immediately I, you know, took to social media and drew a link between our

current president's rhetoric toward immigrants and this person's actions.

And I don't always know if it's that, and, and I got a lot of pushback from Trump supporters

saying like, how dare you blame the president for these actions?

So I don't, I don't always know what meaningful connection we can or should draw between someone's

beliefs and someone's actions.

Yeah.

I will say for Texas Republican leaders to call for a ban on Islamic immigration or immigration

from Islamic countries, um, is this intention with their pretty strong commitment to gun

rights and gun ownership, um, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Alan, do you, I, Sky's actually studied world religions more than I have?

Me too.

It's a bummer that he's running here.

Yeah, it's a bummer.

Thanks, Sky.

Yeah.

Nice week.

He's on a, he's on a plane with his wife somewhere.

He's at a plane.

Yeah, he's in a nursery.

He went somewhere warm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Um, Kuwait, I think.

That's probably a mistake.

Um, it's funny reading this and hearing y'all talk about it right now is making me think,

um, no, and I have been watching the West Wing.

He's never seen it and I have watched it a bajillion times and we just got to the first

episode.

I've never seen it either.

You've never seen it either.

Keelan, surely you have.

I have not seen the West Wing.

There's just, it was a TV show.

It was just another TV show.

Oh my God.

You hadn't seen Star Wars till like a minute ago, so I haven't still, um, I really don't

want to hear it.

Anyway, you, yeah, but I love, I love the West Wing.

The start of the third season, the first episode is so weird until you remember that it was

their first episode to come out post 9-11, because you've got this whole trajectory with

like the president, whether he's going to run again, there's all this drama, the season

ends in a cliffhanger.

And then the first episode is like this very, like somewhat didactic, like kind of cringy

lesson about religious toleration and terrorism and then you go, oh, they had to do something.

Like they're, they're doing a political show.

The thing that I actually found really moving about it that relates to this is they're

trying to hold this kind of moderate line.

That whole show, you remember how we used to be able to say, like the right has a point

about something, the left has a point about something like that whole show in somewhat

an overly optimistic, kind of sentimental way.

That was the critique of the show that's often true.

But it is also true that like I appreciate the kind of just sincerity of like what if

we just tried to do good things in politics and we, you know, and in this episode, one

of the things they're doing as they're trying to say, like yes, religious extremism and

terrorism are a threat to people's lives and we should take this seriously also.

Don't blame all of Islam and every Muslim person you know for this, this violence and

they compare it to to say that that extremism is the same as all of Islam is to say that

the KKK is all of Christianity.

So they're doing all of that.

But one of the things that I thought was really Christian actually about that episode is

that when they're pressed on the violence and in this episode, there's a bunch of college

students kind of asking these folks that work in the, in the White House, you know, all

their policy questions about terrorism and Islamic extremism.

And one of the things they say is at the end of the day, all of this evil and violence

is nonsense.

Like you can't make it make sense even with a religious or an ideological doctrine.

And that's a profoundly Christian idea that some of this politicking after a mass shooting

always seems to forget is that to Caitlin's point, like yes, you, you can find some lines,

but you always want to be kind of humble and uncertain about how to bring, you know,

the policy or the ideology straight into this kind of violence.

But at the end of the day, Christians, many Christians throughout history have said

on some level, if creation is good and violence is the core or evil is the corruption of creation

or the absence of being, then it, it's core evil and violence is nonsense.

Like trying to make sense of it is to give it a dignity that it is not owed.

It is always absurd for it to actually happen.

And I think there needs to be a dose, especially when politicians are always picking like,

how do I fit this into the preconceived political idea I already had for Christians to say,

we should respond with some analysis.

It's not, you know, like we can't wonder what policies or conditions or cultural things

are making this more or less likely.

But at the end of the day, there needs to be some amount of throwing our hands up and

just going, if you go and shoot people willy-nilly on some level, don't try to make sense

of that.

It's impossible.

Okay.

When Trump says in describing our new war that we're killing wicked men and our cause

is righteous.

So when that language has never been misused, and for Christians, American Christians,

that almost, you know, instinctively has a positive, that like makes me feel good about

America.

Right.

You know, yeah, our cause is righteous because it's freedom and stuff.

It's freedom and not, not getting shot at by bad guys.

Like the bad guys are always wicked and there's all the bad guys are always wicked and we're

always righteous.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We're always the, the good guys.

So other Caitlin, how do you, how do you react when you hear that?

Skeptically.

I mean, skeptically, do you think he believes it or is it language he's adopted from his?

Phil, you're asking me to discern the mind of Trump.

Yes.

Please.

If I could have successfully done this, I would be a billionaire by now.

I would have published that thing.

Yeah.

Anyway.

You know, send comment Trump's brain to get a DM link to my article explaining it.

Yeah.

I mean, we, I think it's fair to point out that most U.S. presidents, Democrat, Republican

have used moral, even religiously in English language, when Bush picked up evil doers to

describe our enemies in the Middle East and how much was, how much is that idea influenced

by our, our association and affiliation with Israel?

Because Israel is obviously the good guys because they're God's chosen people.

So it's very easy to make a case that they, they can't be wicked because they're God's

chosen people.

And if we know anything from the Old Testament, it's going to save the Israelites, never

did anything wicked.

Yeah.

The Bible's going to save us.

But that, but that feeds into this Christian narrative that, you know, we have to, those

are wicked people because they oppose God's people and we're the friend of God's people.

So our cause is righteous.

That makes sense, right?

That only make, that's just logic, Caitlin.

Well, I just don't think any U.S. president would, of course, the U.S. president is going

to offer moral rationale for going to war, putting aside, like, the causes of the, of the

conflict or the historical context or actions from the U.S. government that has precipitated

the conflict that's currently happening overseas in some other country.

So I don't think it's a Republican or, or Democrat, like, I don't think it's a Republican

only thing.

I'll say that.

Yeah.

Vagely Christians, certainly moralistic framing to justify going to war.

Yeah, that's exactly how the Iranians, Iranians talk about us, you know, that they're,

it's a holy war against the great Satan.

We're the evil one.

I just think, you know, is everyone righteous in their own eyes?

Yeah.

It's, I think I've read that somewhere.

Like, really early on in this long book that I picked up a while ago, like, one of the

first things that the author says, no, I think that that language makes me squeamish just

because of how easy it is to think that our nation is always doing the right thing and

how good it feels for us from an ego perspective.

And then how easily manipulated that language can be, yeah, how easy it is to manipulate

that language for actually unholy or like, at least morally ambivalent or ambiguous.

Well, and it makes it so much easier to dehumanize your enemy when you simply described them

as wicked or evil.

First, Caitlin, you have any thoughts about what we do?

What about that?

I mean, it's, to Caitlin's point, it's, it's both universal, like I think of Biden, you

know, quoting, here I am, Lord, send me to talk about the US military.

Like it is, it's universal across the political spectrum.

There's also a not horrible, like human impulse at the heart of it, which is like, like

Sky has said before, no one wants to be, I forget what he, what phrase he used, but

like, no one wants to be the big, bad evil guy.

Like everyone wants to believe they're doing the right thing.

And if you find yourself in a position where you feel whether it's because of your loyalty

to the president or because of the position you hold in the government, that you have to

be in support of something, the way that you, like you said, feel better about doing it

is to say, well, this is what's justified under these circumstances.

They're the big bad and we're the good guys.

And it's easier to see that in very exaggerated circumstances than it is in my own life.

But I am prone to do that in all sorts of ways.

And it's a lot harder to figure out what it would look like to genuinely have the kind

of humility that says it is ambiguous.

And even in terms of our participation in the political system, like we've talked about

on the show a million times, whoever we are electing, whatever policies we're supporting,

there are some that in particular historical moments will just be stark moral choices.

Slavery is wrong.

Like the abolitionists who said I'm not really compromising on that, that was a good thing.

But most of our political choices live in this space of ambiguity and it's really hard

to consistently have the posture of, I'm not the unambiguous good guy.

My opponents are not the unambiguous bad guys.

I'm going to have to try and work with them.

I'm going to have to figure out what the best compromise in this situation is.

It's really hard to do that.

It's even harder when we're in an administration that has not announced of the humanity to try

and not do it.

What can we do to help the groups that the administration keeps painting as evil or dangerous

or garbage or less deserving?

We can argue with the administration and we can argue with people on Twitter that are

supportive of the administration.

Or we could not do that.

Or we could not do that also.

But then who would, if not me, Lord, send me?

If someone's wrong on Twitter and no one's there to argue with them, were they really

there at all?

The president was there in argument.

Like our Muslim friends, our small American friends, our Latino friends, we have so many

groups that are being targeted by the administration, being other, you know, that they're not us.

They're not real Americans.

How can we help them?

What are your suggestions, other Caitlin?

What, how can we help?

You've lived in some very diverse areas.

What's it like on the ground and how do you help people know that you're with them?

Okay.

I'm solving all division and conflict in the center.

That's why we invited you on today.

Well, I don't have, I don't have an answer that could be applied to all times and all

places, in part because I think the answer is probably contextual and locally rooted.

I mean, more nuance.

I don't, unfortunately, I know how fun it is to argue with people on the internet.

It can be real fun and feel really good, but I am convinced more strongly than ever that

I think it only just solidifies people's prejudices and as you know, Phil, there are some

bad actors on the internet who will take any kind of pushback and actually use it to either

sick their supporters on you or anyway, I just, I think this is just an example that came up

in church yesterday morning.

I live in a really religiously diverse neighborhood in Pittsburgh now and there was an announcement

during the service about a fundraiser that the church is doing to help support local mosques.

Iftar, meals, they are expecting so many more people to come to these meals like at the end

of Ramadan than in years past and so the church was actually teaming up with synagogues in my

neighborhood. It's a heavily Jewish neighborhood to raise money to buy food for all the predominantly

Muslim people who are coming to the mosque to eat and I just think, yeah, that you might think,

like, oh, great, what is that kind of do? It's a one-off thing, but I actually do think that

yeah, I think that's what actually does something. Like helping to feed your neighbor,

yeah, your your Muslim neighbor, your Jewish neighbor, your non-Christian neighbor, like it doesn't,

it doesn't really like the our call to care for people and to reach across

aisles is actually not based on whether they agree with us theologically or not, right?

Or whether we have different views of God or Jesus or scripture, like at the end of the day,

feeding people who need to eat is what we're all to do. So I thought that was really encouraging.

I was like, I was moved by that and I think it's probably it probably starts there. I don't think

it starts in this disembodied digital space. Yes. Oh, that means I'll have to go outside.

Sorry. Oh, I don't like it. Okay. It will be interesting to see

how all of this unfolds in the next couple of weeks and what it means for the fact that

the our attack on Iran inspired an attack in Austin, which is now inspiring us to be even

more anti-immigrant, which is what we were thinking about before the war started, was being

anti-immigrant. We have like three ruts and everything we have to throw into one of those ruts

because that's what we're about right now. What if we, we're just going to talk about one more

thing to cleanse our palettes? Did you hear Hannah Neelman is pregnant with baby number nine?

I like how the way you said that makes it sound like it's your friend. Like our mutual friend Hannah.

Yeah. I just like ran out of my cast. Did you hear about Hannah? She's she's pregnant with her

ninth baby. Yeah. That's not exciting. I listen. I, I am not above a tradwife Instagram influencer deep dive.

Deep dive. I love it actually. So. Yes. Tell us who Hannah Neelman is and why I should care.

Kaelin probably knows more. Kaelin, tell us who Hannah Neelman is and why I should care.

So Hannah Neelman is the co-owner of ballerina farm, which is probably the most.

Is that where they grow ballerinas? I think it's named that because she studied at Julliara

as a professional ballerina. She is a ballerina. And she is one of the most prominent, if not the most

prominent tradwife influencers. What's a tradwife?

Tradwife is a social media influencer whose aesthetic and content promotes a kind of return to

traditional womanhood. So a lot of it focuses on domestic life, baking cooking,

carrying for someone, you know, for one's family. That's tied to having and raising lots of

children. Like there's kind of a. So what's the difference between tradwife and quiverful?

What's the difference between me? Yeah, the doggers and the ballerina.

So not all the tradwife influencers are explicitly religious in their content.

I think if you probably dug, you could find religious beliefs or affiliation for a lot of these

women. But unlike the quiverful folks, like Hannah Neelman does not post, you know, scripture

passages in scriptie fonts. It's all like her gorgeous kitchen with a three million dollar stove.

Like these people have money, not all the tradwife folks, but she certainly does.

The ones that are successful at tradwifing is is tradwifing the way to make money.

It can be if you're good at it. Now Hannah Neelman is also married to the son of the founder of

JetBlue. So like she's doing okay. Yeah, no matter what. That makes it easier to have. But

so she's a Juilliard trained ballerina. She was crowned Mrs. American 2023 while 20 weeks pregnant

with one of her nine children is she the kind of person that people that women look up to or that

make women jealous that you can have you can be on your ninth pregnancy. Yeah, I feel like that's

also like a question for some of these women's therapists office. Yeah. Third option that you are

yeah, what is the third option that she's inspiring because she can do amazing things that you can't.

It was interesting to go look at the pregnancy announcement post.

On on Hannah Neelman's Instagram page. Yeah, she posted it on it was an ad for her company

was her pregnancy. Protein powder. Her protein powder. I actually came here to the podcast to

make sure that both of you are getting enough protein. Oh, thank goodness. Yeah. And if we

subscribe to your protein powder program, the PPP. Then you'll get it. Yeah. Yes. So she announces

this in the midst of this like ad for ballerina farm protein powder packet the PPP.

And you know, some of the comments are like, how do you have so many babies kind of in this.

Oh, my gosh, are you basically out of the hand the hand made hand made tail? Yeah.

Like do you have agency? Are you being forced to do this? Right. Because I think the implication is

that any woman who would have nine kids is probably not choosing to do it. But I think and then

their other comments are that are like, this is what this is what feminism should be about. It's

women getting to do whatever they want. Yeah. Why is it that like the scaldi old-timey feminists are

shocked when a woman chooses to have nine children when it should be about choice? Is she a

Rorschach test of your views of feminism? And I don't know what else.

Yeah. I certainly think your response to tradwife content, kind of it maps neatly onto some

pretty strong like ideological jumps. Yeah. But I can't look at tradwife content without thinking

about the performative nature of it, right? Yeah. Like I think it's if you just think about all the

lighting and camera work that it takes to get a really beautiful shot of a woman making sourdough bread

in her kitchen. Yeah. Like there's none of this is kind of casual or it wouldn't exist without

social media. It wouldn't exist without a platform and like highly curated content. Yeah. Yeah.

Right. I think that's really significant. I also think most of the tradwife content you can't

read apart from a consumeristic framework. Like there is there is often something being

bought and sold here. There is the attempt to turn this content into like a way to make a living

and sometimes like a lot of money. Yeah. Is it that different than like back to the woods folks

who have a YouTube channel about how you build a log cabin and set up your own off the grid power

supply? Is it that different than that? Like you mean survivalists? Yeah. Or just off the grid folks.

Like just say goodbye. Say goodbye to city life and we'll show you how to you know make your own

raise bees. There's definitely a kind of through line and a lot of the tradwife content,

a kind of assumption that the modern world is do it is not good for us on a human level. Like

we're not meant to live at this pace. We're not to live meant to live in front of screens.

What is this doing to our children tomorrow for my next update?

Like and subscribe. Yeah. There is a sense that like something is off with the modern world.

And so if we just kind of return to the tradwife content is always like an attempt to

harken back to a time that was supposedly simpler and better. Does it look more like the 1950s?

Or does it look more like the 1920s? Well, there's actually both. Like there are so many subgenres

within the tradwife. There's a kind of romance now. Almost fetishization of a 50s housewife

wearing like cute heels while vacuuming. But then there's also the kind of

refart like returning to farming and growing your own food and isn't that so beautiful to go

back to the land. So there's whatever kind of tradwife content you want. You can find it.

What did you just discover? I was I was playing around on the ballerina farm website because

along the lines of what Caitlin was saying, I'm so fascinated by this because of the conversation

we had a few weeks ago about gender and kind of the right and the left are obsessed with gender.

We didn't spend a lot of time talking about the specifics of some of this. But one way that the

right and left in different flavors are obsessed with gender is these categories of like you can

be a girlboss or you can be a tradwife. And there's there's options for men too. Like we've talked

weeks and weeks ago about kind of the day in the life where they get ready with me or the weekend

habit routine of a bunch of men on TikTok show and that there's never a child or a wife in those

videos. But it's like very disciplined and regimented and it's all kind of oriented towards

efficiency and like the constitution of your body and and we live in a world that is both

obsessed with gender and very confused about it. Few people fully inherit or feel like they want

to inherit the ideas that their parents or grandparents had about gender or they want to go back to

their great-grandparents ideas about gender. But because there's so little inherited local ideas

people feel ruthless and they just don't know what to do. And so instead of what I would prefer

which is like we have lots of contextual conversations about what it means to be a man or what

it means to be a woman in a particular time and place. We want rules. We want structure.

Ballerina Farm will offer you that. The dude on Instagram or TikTok will offer you that.

But the thing that just shocked me while I was looking around at the Ballerina Farm website

because there is a promise there of like you can buy the sourdough kit. You can buy the protein

powder. You can buy and the the kind of appeal is if I don't know what it means to be a woman

or I don't know what it means to be a wife. I can go on Ballerina Farm website and I can buy

a bunch of this stuff. You can buy your way to meaning. Including an 85 dollar every day bowl.

It's a single bowl. It's a giant. Is it like a giant for? Well, for could you make soup for

10 inches wide. So that's kind of big. It's apparently best for flower arrangement,

salads, fruit or for making sourdough bread. But it is 85 dollars. Always with the sourdough.

So it's costly. Would you be a traditional flower? Yeah, traditional doesn't come cheap.

It doesn't. Not today. No, poor people have to be modern. They can't be traditional.

Exactly. They don't have the money. Okay, last question and this is the one that everyone is

dying to know. If I were talking to two women who are both engaged, which one of you is more

likely to become a tradwife? Wait, what does that have to do? I did not know where you were going.

Well, I did think you're both on a path to be a wife. I was going to say if you're confused

about how to be a wife, Valerie Farm will tell us. Yeah, if you want to be a tradwife, the first

step is probably getting engaged. So since you have both done that recently, the next question is

which of you is more likely to end up on YouTube talking about sourdough? I mean, I'd like to

think neither of us are headed in that direction. Okay. I know. But if one of you, if it had to be one of us,

it had to be one of you. I don't know. How much sourdough bread have you made in your life?

I've literally made a never, never, never, never, never, never. Okay. How often do you learn to cook

something new? I actually enjoy cooking itself. Yeah. Okay. Okay. I'm happy to cook dinner for

my fiancé when he comes over for dinner. Okay. Yeah. I don't have any problem with that. We

typically do take turns. Oh, okay. Not very trady. No. Okay. What about you? I do cook for Noah a

lot more than he cooks for me. Yeah. Okay. But I'm concerned about his health. Like I just,

I'm like, I want us to live long lives. And so I just cook that reason. All right. Caitlin too

has to go. She's got other things to do. We appreciate you filling in for Sky anytime.

Oh, there's a lot going on. We'll have to talk about it next week. We'll come back and the new

things will have happened. And I'll tell you how this 85 dollar bowl works. Yeah. Yeah.

To give us a, you could, you should do an unboxing video. It's sold out actually. Oh,

of course, they can't make them fast enough. They better charge more to get the demand down a little

bit. Hey, everybody, thanks for tuning in. Go to Holy Post. Learn about Holy Post Plus. Lots of

content there. People are making it almost every day that you will enjoy. And take care of

yourselves. We'll see you next time. This episode is brought to you by Public Good Generation.

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Our interview this week is with Carrie McCain, a West Texas-based writer and communications director

at First Presbyterian Church in Midland. She recently reported the story of a Venezuelan mother

deported without her children and the Trump-voting pastor who stepped in to care for them and help

get them home. Carrie has spent the last few years writing for outlets such as The New York Times,

The Atlantic, The Free Press, and Christianity today about what it's like to live in a deeply

conservative community while resisting the easy categories of both the right and the left.

Her work on immigration and vaccine hesitancy challenges the caricatures we build about one

another and reminds us that most of our neighbors are far more complicated than our politics allow.

Here is Caitlin's interview with Carrie.

Carrie McCain, thank you so much for joining me today.

Yes, thanks for having me. This is fun.

Yeah, I'm so excited to talk to you. I have, I mean, you have written so many things we could talk

about so many different articles that you've written. Before we get into any of that, why don't you

just start with tell us a little bit about yourself how you came to write about topics like this.

Well, like I said, we're going to cover a lot and typically, I mean, we have a lot of guests on

the show who are academics or who are pastors. You are neither one of those, but like give us a

little background and like how did you come to be writing about public health for The New York Times

or about immigration for Christianity today? Yeah, it's a weird and wild story and when I still don't

know that I can answer completely coherently, but I guess the best way to describe I've always

loved writing since I was a little girl. I had lots of journals, but in 2020, during the pandemic,

I had had a blog for a lot of years and I wrote a blog post about how this is like a little

thing that happened that a lot of people don't even know about, but it was a big deal in my town.

And at the beginning of the pandemic, the price to oil, like a barrel of oil went negative.

And at the time, that was sort of seen as this like among some on the more progressive left,

like the Center AOC like tweeted like, don't you love to see it? And I remember like thinking,

I mean, I instantly tons of people I knew had gotten laid off and businesses were getting,

like it was really scary for my community. Probably at that point in time, more scary than the

pandemic because of this was like an April. Yeah, yeah. Before everything really started getting worse,

from a health strike. But and I wrote a blog post that like went a little viral locally,

and a friend of mine told me, you should turn that into an op-ed and pitch it to a national

newspaper. And I was like, well, I don't know how to do that. So she walked me through the process

and gave me like email addresses to send it to. And she just sort of guided me through the whole

thing. And I literally copied and pasted her instructions and worked my way through the process

and pitched 10 papers. And you know, within a couple days, I'd heard back from a couple,

the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. And both of them offered to publish it. And I

ultimately went with The New York Times because it was sort of the audience that I more wanted to

reach. Yeah. And it was, you know, way, it was, it was very unique. It was about that particular

situation. But in some ways, it's kind of emblematic of all the work I've done since then, which

has been this person that's, I mean, I consider myself to be pretty moderate. But I've always been

in Texas, like born and raised, other than some brief years living in China, which we could talk

about as you wanted. But other than that, I've always been here, but kind of culturally a little bit

not, I don't know, not in the mainstream sometimes, but on the edge of that locally. But then

nationally, probably considered pretty conservative. And so that in between states has always been

where I've landed. And I just find people interesting. And I tend to find things that we have

in common, more interesting than the things that are different about us. And so I guess that's

kind of what has happened is I've become, I guess when you write, not bad at that level for the first

time, then it's sort of open story. I don't mean to be coy, but I just think that at that point,

people would read your emails. And so then it just sort of led one to the next. And that's how I

came to be writing about whatever's happening in the moment. And I think for a lot of the more,

insofar as I've written for the more like progressive liberal outlets that some people would call

them are the more mainstream outlets. It's been as a voice of somebody that's coming from the right

of center, but probably not so, not so extreme that people stop listening. They're kind of curious

about it as opposed to putting up their guard. And so it gives me, but honestly, in many ways,

I don't understand it myself. If you would have asked if I was going to write about public health

for the New York Times, I'd be like, absolutely not. I know nothing about that. So I don't even,

I'm not sure that that's kind of how it came to be. Yeah. I love that. I mean,

carry one, I think you sound like a lot of the people listening who I think feel similar. Like I've

heard from many of our listeners who are like, who are from Texas or from North Carolina. And they're

like in my town, I'm the progressive one. But when I'm thinking of myself like nationally, they

think I'm so conservative. And I don't really know exactly where I fit. And I'm trying to figure it out.

The other thing I love about your answer is you so well just embodied there what I see in

your work, which is curiosity about people and just like a willingness to look at what is there

without jumping in immediately and saying like, I already have the categories. I know where to put

this. I know, but just curiosity. And one of the places that I discovered this first and just

really enjoyed it was this New York Times PC wrote about the title is, this is why my Texas

town lost trust in public health. And this was March of last year. And I love how you just,

you approach a topic that I think maybe even many of the listeners of the Holy Post would

would jump to a conclusion quickly about like they might know someone online or someone in their

community that's hesitant about vaccines or is not vaccinating their children. I would do this.

I have immediately negative connotations about those people, sometimes quite harsh negative

connotations. And you approach it with some historical background and some empathy. I'm going to

read really quickly one of the things you said that I think describes this really well. You wrote,

there's a tendency to assume the worst about people who don't trust public health authorities

advice about vaccines. At best, they're dismissed as backward and stupid at worst, selfish and

unemphathetic. I feel the pull to dismiss some people as all of these things, such as the pastor

and Fort Worth who bragged that his church's school had the lowest measles vaccination rate in Texas.

But while smugness might feel good, it doesn't help anyone understand the average vaccine

hesitant person's perspective. And it doesn't solve our collective problem. A roaded trust in

our public health institutions harms us all. And in order to get back on track, we need to understand

how we got here. So give us some of the context, Carrie, for like, give us an example of what we're

talking about here of like how you would describe someone who experiences that are roaded trust to

the point of not vaccinating your children or themselves. How would you describe this other way

of viewing maybe even people that you know in real life who or hesitant about vaccines?

I think that it often becomes like a political, it's just a political trope in some ways. It's like

it immediately, well, let me back up a little bit further and say I didn't set out to write

about vaccines. That was actually part of it probably that allowed me to do it with sort of a

neutral, a little bit more of a neutral stance or a neutral approach in my own heart because I

it wasn't really a topic that I felt like up in arms about. I mean, I would have a harder time

being measured in some other topics. But that one, you know, I had had a piece that I had done

for the New York Times before and they came back and they asked me because the measles outbreak

happened pretty close to where I live and they came and asked me this question about why are people

not getting vaccinated for the measles and I was chewing on that question. I think it's a deeper

question and that's what led me to that. So that's kind of the first thing is I and it made me

start to ask questions of my friends and neighbors that I hadn't actually talked about. I really

have a little bit of a healthy, you know, I'm not going to ask you before I let my kid

come play at your house whether or not you vaccinated. I'm just not really that's not my personality

but that piece forced me to start having that conversation with some folks and I found myself

surprised in some cases of like, oh, this person's not vaccinating but that they don't look the way

I saw in antivax or looked, you know, I had my mental category of what those kinds of people

look like based on my, you know, based largely on what I see on Facebook or X or in the media

but then when I started talking to real people in my actual life about it, I realized like there's

a lot of people here that have more complicated views about this than I had allowed and I realized

that there's this huge a lot of times in our national conversations. There's really just two boxes

that we can on any topic. Your four immigration, your against immigration, your four vaccines,

your against vaccines, your four giving your 13 year old cell phone, your, your luthine.

Like there's just really extreme but most of us live in this tension in the middle and

when I started talking to folks about their experiences and taking seriously like

their attempts to best discern what's right for their family and how few of those people were

trying to project their own value systems on others. They weren't really, they weren't really

saying like this is what everybody needs to do. They were just saying that I'm doing the best I

can here and this is what we've decided for ourselves and for one getting them to talk about it

was hard because nobody you know I think the people that are willing to talk about it tend to be

the ones that are looking to build platforms whether that's being an influencer or an outrage,

whatever you call an outrage influencer. Either way they like the attention. A lot of folks

are just kind of quiet about it and so if you could get them to talk about it you began to sense like

this is something they've spent a lot of time thinking about and a lot of time even if I disagree

with where they landed they weren't just flippant about their decisions and I think yeah it comes

back to that curiosity which I briefly mentioned a second ago that I lived in China for four years

and that's really in the weird way that was such a formational time in my life because we didn't

understand anything about what we were getting myself into like husband and I we went literally

of knowing like one word in Chinese and this was before you had translate apps on cell phones and

all that and so we were learning everything afresh like how to get our groceries how to get

clean water to drink we had to have people help us with I mean they even did you know that they

even eat bananas from the opposite end that you and I would I did not know that yeah like most

most of my Chinese friends like if you picked up a banana I bet you start at the top

yeah totally yeah they they peel it from the other end interesting I guess they keep the handle

that way that's kind of smart like I mean maybe that's not all of China but the

real I was there at and I remember thinking initially like my first feeling was you're doing

that wrong my second thought was that's interesting I wonder why they're doing yeah wait and that

whole shift that happened for me over four years of constantly having to react to my own internal

you're doing it wrong and created a little bit more curiosity in me I think and so even in

situations like that vaccine piece um I began to realize it there's a lot more that goes into people's

perspectives here and there's a lot more history of of pain and sickness and fears and people

they know that suffered in some way I mean there's just there's a lot more in that decision-making

matrix than you know whether or not they agree with your politics hmm I so appreciate that and

everything you've been describing in terms of the like if I know one thing about a person I know

everything in terms of the like if it's one if it's not one extreme it's the other

applies as well to our conversation around immigration and we've covered for for weeks now at the

Holy Post we've done many episodes where we've talked about some of the really heartbreaking things

that are happening right now with the Trump administration with ice with with you know American

citizens who have been killed with immigrants of various kinds that have been you know staying in

their homes and afraid and and I think one of the one of the challenges of addressing the actual

policy piece of this like how do we make a better immigration system is there has been such great

wrongdoing and it does tempt us to think anyone who disagrees with me about immigration policy

writ large is one of those bad people in this bad box that I've created and again one of my favorite

pieces that you have written in in 2025 you wrote a christianate today piece called

immigration's complicated costs for my town and my soul and you start out describing

what it's like to be in a place where there is a much higher percentage of of immigration compared

to some of the the other places in the country where people might have ideas about immigration but

are not experiencing it so intimately and I appreciated similarly how that piece was was trying

to at least in my mind trying to describe how people could come to differing positions on this not

from a place of being evil or stupid but from a place of of grappling with their community changing

and then sometimes having political leaders you know capture their affections and mobilize those

those very fine motivations towards towards wrong ends but give us a little bit of of how you would

describe how you have experienced people having this opposition to immigration that might be different

than people listening expect I think a lot of people listen to the podcast go if you have

opposition to what what they might consider fair more just immigration policies or if you in general

want there to be less immigrants in the US or less immigration into the US I think most people

listening would go that's just wrong that's just wrong that's just evil give us some more sense of

like complexify forests or humanize for us some of the other perspectives that you have encountered

and have written about I love immigration writing I love immigrant stories my my whole life I've

spent like since I was in college have spent in meshed in either refugee work you know was it kind

of an immigrant myself for a while you know in China at least experienced a foreigner's life with

I have a daughter that's internationally adopted so she's an immigrant um I have a dear adopted

daughter that's was a refugee that she's not officially adopted but like I have all these people

I love that are part of my life that that's part of their story and so I think one of the main

things I would say about immigration is that very few people understand it including the people

that have the loudest opinion um you know my favorite thing to get angry at is when people say

well they should just come here legally okay tell me about that tell me what you think the

process is for how to come here legally because I can assure you it is it is not what you think

it is so broken it's so convoluted there is not a clear pathway for anybody I mean

depending on which you know whether you're from Mexico or Canada you you qualify for vastly

different visas and there's all these loopholes and just it doesn't make any sense there's not a

coherent immigration policy and Russell Moore wrote about Jeffrey Epstein and the culture wars and

there's this one line he says in there maybe one reason um is that Jeffrey Epstein figured out

the deep dark secret of this moment the people who fight culture wars often believe what they say

but the people who lead culture wars often don't and I I probably would make a strong case that

the people who fight for just immigration often believe what they say but the people who

are leading the two political parties saying that they want to fix immigration they actually are

both benefiting from the fact that it is remains in chaos and remains um broken and so I

I as the first thing is that everything is more complicated than you think um and there's no

patty answer um I I I would believe that there needs to be more strict border laws because that's

actually more just because what we've done instead through the past several years is allowing lots

and lots of people into the country but not giving them legal permit to be here yeah and not giving

them the protections of law to stay and as a result they are this almost indentured servant class

that is abused and misused and basically exists one step above human trafficking plus all the

ones that actually end up in human trafficking so you know the the challenge I would give to my

more progressive friends that that just sort of want to say love is the answer is that this isn't

love this is cruelty in a different form and then on the more conservative side when somebody says

something like well they should come here legally or or you know we we need to protect American

jobs and like well who do I know that signing up to roof houses right now and and are you wanting to

go to the meat packing plant and butcher the cattle that you hope to have at a decent price

in the grocery store because our entire I feel like we're our all of our hands are dirty in this

like we all whether we mean to or not we are all implicit complicit in a system that's taking

advantage of people and their vulnerability in their human need we are taking advantage of them

and leaving the benefits of their labor and there's and and both ends of the political spectrum

like to point to the other side and say that they are the ones doing it but the truth is here we are

and nobody's actually working very hard to fix it there's a bill right now before Congress

and the Dignity Act which is a bipartisan immigration bill and sponsored by a woman in Florida

and it would probably do some of the most it would it would make both parties a little happy

and both parties a little angry but it would actually do the most of anything in the last couple

decades to six immigration and the last I checked there's only like 36 Congress people there's

like 18 the Democrats 18 the Republicans and the last time I looked at it which is just last week

that has co-signed it and so that's like we talk a lot about wanting to fix this but nobody does

yeah and so as soon as one person on either the left or the right says well it's the problem

with the people over there on the other side I'm like actually your side's not doing anything that

fixes you there and so that's kind of where I land but I think there's some really great

I love telling complicated immigration stories that break up this nonsense that one side is

the problem yeah I give us it you wrote recently a piece for the free press that I think it's a

great example of a complicated immigration story so tell us a little bit about this piece was

titled the mother deported without her kids and the heading under it was um I'm gonna say her name

wrong how should I say her name Marie B is the way I boys Marie B when Marie B. Belleno was sent

back to Venezuela she was desperate to bring her kids instead they were left behind and ended up

in the care of a Trump voting pastor with a plan to get them home which like I don't know anyone

who's like scrolling and sees that is not like oh interested in that so tell us that story

well it's it's crazy and I will say that one thing I think has happened uniquely I I've put

fault at both administrations are really beyond that like go back more 10 years 20 years

for the chaos of of where we are now but I will say that there seems to be more chaos at this

moment yeah um then I've seen in the past where we've just got to deport people and we're not

you know if we if we chop a hand off or chop a leg off in the process look sees you know we're moving on

and that that seems to be happening or do a lot of evidence at that so that that is what I find

most alarming about this and um because yes according to the mother in the story that we interviewed

and others I will say we I know of at least 10 other children myself right now in the United

States who are minors who are here in the US whose parents and legal guardians have been

deported without them they do not have legal guardians in the United States and as far as the federal

government has released information to us the federal government does not know where these children

are they are being passed between friends and family and in the case of Somal and I know strangers

but they the the difference between them ending up in the house of a safe stranger and a unsafe

stranger is just happenstance or miracle or whatever you know someone wants to call that so

that to me is unacceptable like we can have strong border policy and even deport people um without

without traumatizing children and I yeah you know I'll well that's probably not fit for public

sake but I the issue in this case is not that she was deported she chop lifted she broke some laws

I have zero issues with her being deported to be honest with you the issue is that she was deported

without her children in defiance of what the federal government's own policies say that they would

do in these kinds of cases they have no they will not produce evidence that they followed their own

policies um and so the children are left in this vulnerable situation and in this case it was

literally she's in Venezuela not sure what to do the people that had her kids aren't going to be

able to keep them much longer um they weren't ever intending to keep them permanently anyway and so

she calls a friend who calls this pastor who lives in midland and says hey can you go get these kids

and he drives to Dallas and picks them up and brings them back wow and then takes care of them

for several weeks while he's trying to figure out how to get them back and we have to read the

story to find the whole and happy ending but he succeeded in that batch of kids now there's more

that we're still not sure because policies have changed since then um we're still trying to figure

out how to get some of them home but the the reality of of how broken that is i'm like we should all

be able to agree this is not about whether or not you think it's good to be you know deporting

people or not this is about protecting children and if we can't agree on that like we've really

lost the plot right um so i don't i forget what you asked me but that's yeah that's the story

a little bit talk a little bit about because i think part of what complicates this story if you're

scrolling on social media and you see this is that the the heading includes ended up in the care

of a trump voting pastor like if you're scrolling you might be going i mean along the lines of what

we've been saying you're they're a good guys and bad guys to a lot of people and the good guys are

you know anti deporting people especially anti deporting people separately than their children

and those are the good guys and the bad guys voted for trump and support everything trump does and

the world is neatly divided into those two categories you could flip it from the other political

perspective right but like they're a good guys and they're a bad guys and a story like this kind of

complicates that idea of the world so tell us a little bit about that well i think that's i

i wrote a little more about that particular angle i think in the follow up piece i did for ct

and where i actually think that's where this is what the church should be offering this cultural

moment yeah and that we're not in too many cases and that is that we should be set apart from

the culture we should be a you know a little bit unable to be politically categorized and as

you know my friends the pastor who's the center of the story is very very conservative politically

more conservative than he politically for sure um and some of the things he agrees with and

votes for and believes in i personally don't like i think they're i find them to be a little

extreme in some cases however his politics are not what he's thinking about in that moment his

in that moment he's thinking about what does Jesus say to do and he has this line because

his work with migrants started before this with a migrant shelter he opened up in mexico

um and his the his story of how god changed his heart and got him involved in that work was

pretty profound but it really involves this this very clear call he heard from the lord of don't

ask me why they're here ask me or how they got here ask me what am i supposed to do now that they're

here and that to him is separate from i support as a president that's going to have strict

border laws and deport people who aren't yearly glee and you know he holds those political

positions and he says i am supposed to care for the vulnerable in my midst those two things are

not incompatible the world wants them to be incompatible the church can say they're actually not

incompatible and if the church can't get back to allowing more people to hold those two truths

at the same time we're really kind of an amiss because yeah that's that's the complexity that the

moment demands like to be able to say i i fundamentally don't have an issue with following the laws

and the laws of the land and and she should if she's shoplifted she should be deported okay that

that can be true and we should be sure that her children i protected and cared for and that's

i mean that's as simple as it was like she's she's like this is this isn't that complicated that's

what god calls me to do and that's what led him to do a lot of his other migrant work as well

um without ever really compromising his own personal political stance in fact probably a lot

of the migrants he works with know that like yeah probably pretty open with them about actually

you know i don't yeah i i think this is not i think it's a broken system he also though learned

that you know another common thing that people will say is well they shouldn't have come illegally

they didn't come illegally many of these folks came through and requested asylum is the asylum

process broken absolutely yeah yeah we should this should not be an open gate back door like that

needs to be reformed but they came i mean they have a work permit in some cases that means the government

knows they're here they're not illegal in the way that people think of that and so in his own

journey of getting closer to migrants his own perspective on his political um stances got more

jumbled up and he began to be more aware of the complexity himself which then sort of softens

i mean i think that's really that's why Jesus tells us to draw near to people like because the

closer you get to people the less you're able to die have these absurd reductive stereotypes and

think they hold any water yeah i so i so appreciate that i i spent a lot of my professional life you

know talking to people about what their faith means for their political life and i often tell people

on one hand i want you to think really well about how scripture describes how human

community should best function what you think god demands of us and then ask like how does that

shape how i vote and the policies i should i should support but i often also tell people like

i'm less interested i'm personally because of my work i'm interested in changing your mind maybe

about some political questions but i often tell people i'm less interested in that then i am in you

being a faithful Christian even if you still hold to the same political positions that i might

disagree with that you hold to if you are confronted with along the lines of of this pastor if

you are confronted with opportunities to serve the actual people in your neighborhood do you start

with the political box and then have that determine if you can serve them or not or do you go to

what scripture says i care more about that about you being the kind of person that can respond and

serve them then i do about changing your politics so you vote a different way even though

i do care about that and one of those is much more important than the other somehow we are almost

out of time carry one more question i want to ask you um you mentioned a moment ago you wrote

this piece for the free press and you wrote a CT piece about the same story and in it you have this

description of of how Christians can respond to this political moment or in this moment where

you know if i know how you voted i know everything about you when i know the box to put you in when

when my party tells me not just how to vote but how to treat the people in my neighborhood or how to

respond when people are in need and you give some description of like what a different Christian

approach would be i'd love to hear from you for just a minute about how you think the church can

be more faithful in this moment where are we missing opportunities to as you just described

have a distinctive witness that doesn't fit in the boxes that that people have for us especially

politically i i think the main takeaway i've had just stuff for the last few years is i

because i pay more attention to these stories that i see of people doing it well

um has been a refusal to look at people abstractly it is a it is a people are not issues

people are people and so that that doesn't mean i think so often the the folks that say that often

follow it up with some sort of like bleeding heart liberal you know stuff and as a result it

shuts people down from listening that doesn't mean that it doesn't have to mean that and i think

that's where we need to get more faithful with taking care of the people right in front of us and

that starts with our actual neighbors and our the people around us and unfortunately we all live in

these bubbles of you know increasingly politicized neighborhoods where everybody's like minded but

i think if we pray that god help me be you know help me be a person who restores this streets of

dwelling here then we would find that he brings to our attention people that are complicated and

messy and difficult but that when we actually see them with our own eyes and we begin to encounter

their stories we realize oh this is wait this is not what i'm hearing the pendant on fox news or

on cnn say about this this is this is so much more complicated than that and would and also what

i have done the same thing like what i be in the same situation if if you know the cards had

been dealt a different way and what i've made the same choices and i i just think it's much harder to

not be engaged with real human suffering when you are sitting across the table from someone it's

very easy so i suppose my main my main charge to people would be to sign off the internet to go

touch some grass amen to ask god to bring you an actual living neighbor to love and if it's somebody

that doesn't vote like you or doesn't think like you or does it look like you or doesn't talk like

you all the better like those those are the kinds of relationships we really need to have and that

doesn't mean you have to compromise your values or or you know suddenly shift to some other drastic

position on something it probably just starts with listening and letting them talk and finding out

more about their perspective and it's not world changing but i think it's the only way we can change

things so yeah yeah thank you so much carry for your your really thoughtful writing and work um

and for taking the time to spend with us today yeah thanks for having me

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