I Changed My Mind About Voting – Joshua Good - Anabaptist Perspectives Ep. 100

Hello everybody, and welcome back to another episode of Anabaptist Perspectives. Thanks for tuning in. Today I’m here in Ephrata, Pennsylvania with Josh Good, and Josh is the principal here at Ephrata Mennonite School where we’re filming this, and he’s been involved in education for a number of years, and today we’re going to take a look at his journey, and some of his background, and how he got to where he is today. Joshua, good to have you here. It’s good to be talking with you. Tell us just a little bit about your background, and some of your life journey. I was watching a video of yours that you had put out recently online that took us through some of where you used to be, and where you are now. So just fill in our listeners on some of those details of your life. Sure.

Well as you mentioned I have been here at Ephrata Mennonite School. Just finished my fifth year. So going into year six as a principal, I have been in education for a while. Prior to coming here I was in Brooklyn, New York in the public school system, so not the Christian education world, but was there for about 13 years as a teacher for a while, and then principal for a few years, and then ended there as assistant superintendent. My wife as I’ve spoken - her name is Tanya, and she’s from southern Indiana, so before we lived in Brooklyn I lived in southern Indiana - Montgomery, Indiana. Small, small little midwest kind of typical town for a few years.

There I was in the construction industry, 01:48 - and prior to that I grew up in the Lynchburg, Virginia area. I lived there from 1979 to about 2000, and went to college at Liberty University. Did my undergraduate work there, and prior to that I was from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, so I kind of did the full circle. Started out here as a little shaver, and then rural Virginia. Small town middle America, and Brooklyn for 13, 14 years, and now here for five years.

02:18 - So let’s back up though from where we are today, and your journey in education, and I want to talk about your growing up years, and the formation of how you view the world, and politics what was the foundation of that journey that you’ve had in voting and politics and things in that realm? I come from a family that was very interested in politics, and one of my early memories around politics particularly was 1984, and I was seven years old at the time, and I remember laying on the living room floor. We had a little box radio, and listening to Ronald Reagan debate Walter Mondale with my father, and then you know four years later kind of did it again. This time Bush, and I think Dukakis, and again I remember listening to the debates with my family. So my father was politically pretty attuned, and I learned right away that the republicans were the right party with a capital R, and you know we wanted Reagan to win, and that would have been echoed a little broader than just my family. I would have heard comments from other adults in the church that I was at that kind of articulated you know a sense of hopefulness. We hope the republicans win.

So from 03:53 - very early - when I was seven, eight, nine, ten - there was this kind of sympathy, and cheering from the sidelines for various political factions. It was around that time that I started asking adults in my life. Well, wait a second here. Why don’t we vote? Like we’re listening to the debates, and we know who we want to win, so why don’t we vote? And I asked my dad I think first, and he used to say things like well, I could vote. I don’t think it’s necessarily a sin, but you know I choose not to because they might ask us to go to war at some point, and then if I voted for him, did I vote for the war? But I started to you know to kind of wonder you know well, why wouldn’t we vote if we know this is kind of the way we want to see the country go? So then when I went to Liberty University then, and it was a very, kind of natural transition. I started there in 1996, so I’d have been 19 at the time. Of course 1996.

Another election year, 05:00 - and in this case it would have been Clinton and Bush. To back up a little bit. Liberty University came out of the 1970s, and there was a very famous theologian - Francis Schaeffer, and he wrote this book How Then Shall We Live, and this book was hugely influential in the evangelical world, and trickled into of course some of the Mennonite settings, but the gist of it was Christians need to work at - “engage with” I think is the language that he would often use. Engage with culture directly - secular culture - in an attempt to kind of purify or Christianize it, and make it better, and Jerry Falwell Senior who started Liberty University was heavily influenced by this book. It came out in 1976, and he had the epiphany that what we need is a religious kind of voting bloc that inserts itself into culture like Francis Schaeffer kind of outlined in his book, and then we’ll have the opportunity to kind of purify, and make the culture a better place. So he founds Moral Majority. Founds Liberty University. That was a few years earlier, and I remember when I went to Liberty, hearing him speak, and he would often use this analogy.

06:21 - He said, look, what we need is as Christians - politics is like a football game. We’ve just been - this is what he used to say - we’re just in the bleachers cheering. I thought well, yeah, that’s what we were in my Mennonite Church. We were just in the bleachers cheering, but we didn’t have a team in the field. He said, what we need is a team in the field. This is Jerry Falwell. So he said that Moral Majority, and this Christian voting bloc.

We need Christian politicians, 06:46 - and we need a voting bloc in the field to be our football team, and that’s how we can affect positive change in society, and so you know at Liberty it was of course very patriotic. I studied history there, so the version I got of history was really the white protestant version. The United States is basically a Christian nation founded on Judeo- Christian, western values, and because of that, God has kind of blessed this culture, and yes, Jesus is Lord, but the government is the minister of God as outlined there in Romans 13, and therefore we participate in politics as rightly we should as a Christian nation, the leader of the world. I had professors as I alluded to in my religion courses that were influenced by Schaeffer, and his way of thinking about society. I forgot to mention this. Even when I was in high school then, I wrote an essay in my junior/senior year of why Christians should vote, and I made the argument Paul used his citizenship to dodge some beatings, and to go to Rome, so by the time I got out of Liberty, I was convinced Christians should vote, and be involved kind of as Schaeffer sort of laid out. I actually bought his book. It’s still on my bookshelf.

How Then Shall We Live, 08:18 - and was ready to be actively involved. The one kind of hitch was I belonged to Bethel Mennonite Church, and they had church standards, and you weren’t supposed to vote, so I’ve always been more of a spirit of the law guy rather than a letter of the law, but this was too much. I couldn’t bring myself to vote at that point while I was at Liberty or right there at 2000 because I guess I had taken a covenant agreement seriously, and I felt like I can’t vote as long as I’m a member of this church, so while that was happening I also had met my wife who was from Indiana. So I moved kind of out of the state, and that was this geographical interruption while I was leaving that church, but because of the geography of it, and the voter registration that didn’t really happen at that time. So the truth is I never actually voted. I was very politically attuned, and certainly was cheering, and talking to people, but I have never voted up to this point even though my position would have been that Christians should have voted at that time, so that’s a little bit the way my early experiences kind of fed me into the Liberty University chute, and they were very influential, and I left there really feeling like, you know what? Christians should be involved in politics, and they should vote.

09:52 - So you said in your video that you posted a few weeks ago which we’ll link in the video description here, and in the podcast, but you say that you came to realize the emptiness of politics, and you’ve sort of come full circle. So how was that process of going from writing essays about how Christians should be involved in politics, and your views coming out of Liberty University to the point where you are today which is certainly not at that point? Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think I would say at first, it was a long process. So it’s not something that happened quickly. More happened kind of by degrees. I think if I were to start you know, and name kind of one principle thing, it’s like once I came to really adopt a Christianity that’s centered on Jesus, and embrace sort of a Kingdom Christian mindset or this idea that Jesus came to found His Kingdom that really then was the leverage point that moved me kind of away from nationalism, and the nation state, and that push really came from an influence of people in my life through I guess you could say discipleship.

11:18 - There were kind of two brothers there in New York. Harlan Barnhart, Dwight Nisly that really came from a Kingdom sort of Christian perspective, and from a Christocentric perspective. I used to argue a lot with Harlan, and what maybe he didn’t know at the time is I was listening as we talked about things. Along with that I had gotten in some other arguments with this guy Hans Mast from Kansas. Partly out of an internet argument I had with him, he started a discussion platform. Menno Discuss.

11:53 - And on Menno Discuss, I had the opportunity to go back and forth with people like Dan Ziegler, Wayne Chesley, and many others that articulated a Christocentric version of Christianity that was much different from the evangelical, protestant version that I’d heard at Liberty, and pretty much adopted at Liberty University. Faith Builders I think played a role. I would from afar read some of their work. I read Melvin Lehman’s essay. Would listen to the talks, the colloquies that he had. Steve Brubaker, and Sauder’s, and others. I was reading some of Dean Taylor’s, and listening to some of his messages. My mother had been following Charity for a while, so I would second or third hand read some of the Remnant, and listen to just some of the messages, and then later when the Followers of the Way people - Finny Kuruvilla and company - came along I bought his book King Jesus Claims His church.

While that was happening I was also kind of continuing to study, 12:57 - and learn history, and working in very liberal New York City in the department of education. I was exposed to a lot of other historians, people that had a different perspective. I certainly worked with a number of people of color - people from different nationalities - and kind of hearing their stories, and their perspective on American history, and world history, and how other people experience the guns of the empire is the way I sometimes say it with the empire being the United States. It really led me to kind of reevaluate the sort of protestant, Liberty University narrative of the United States being basically a Christian nation founded on Judeo-Christian values that’s blessed by God, and we need to do our part in advancing that by electing Christians, so on the history side, I really started to kind of reevaluate this kind of story that I’d heard from Liberty, and I really got kind of first-hand experience from people who represented ethnicities and groups of people that had had very negative experiences with the United States, so putting those two things together over the course of about 10, 12, 13 years, I really started to move, started to move, started to move, and eventually kind of landed with perhaps - I don’t fully agree yet with everybody which is no surprise, but perhaps kind of melded a lot of those things together, but I’m at a place where I consider myself an apologist if you will for Kingdom Christianity, and I really think that Christocentrism is starting with Jesus - His life and His witness, and how we apply that. How His life and witness, His teachings, and His death and resurrection then ushered in the Kingdom of God which is being built.

It’s come on earth, and is coming in a greater way in the future, but I’ve 15:19 - really adopted that, and therefore have rejected the nation state as being Kingdoms of this world. I don’t think they’re sufficient for salvation of society. I don’t think they’re the means - I sometimes use the word to describe myself as “apolitical.” That’s not because I think the ideas of a Kingdom Christian don’t impact polity. I think they do, but we don’t use the machinery of the state to do that, and foundationally we don’t use violence and coercion as the method of change, so that’s a little bit the story of how I moved a little bit at a time kind of away from that, but I think the Anabaptist vision is compelling.

I think 16:06 - Kingdom Christianity is compelling. I think there’s a lot of people right now that are in a spot where Jesus as King is a message that really, really resonates. So your mind has been changed, and you would say that the kingdoms of this world are not where we as Christians should be investing in voting and political involvement, but there are many professing Christians, and they argue and rightfully so, that government policy affects people, and aren’t we as Christians slacking if we’re not helping to shape those policies? Are we not supposed to be a salt and light by those means? What would you say to that having been there at one point, and now being at a different spot? How do you address those arguments and concerns? Well, there’s a continuum right? We live in society, and at some levels we must as a matter of living engage with politics. At a very sort of distant level we engage through things like zoning regulations, and speed limits, and these sorts of things, so there’s a little bit of a range when you think about our involvement with government, and voting represents a very kind of direct participation in that. That said good people of the world I respect - people that I respect - do vote, and I advocate for not voting, but I acknowledge that this is something that some people feel like, well, you know what, I wouldn’t insist on it, but if someone asked me for my opinion on this particular policy - sometimes there’s referendums right, as an example - I’m going to vote.

So I don’t know that I would right away say that you 18:07 - know is 100 percent off. I advocate against participating. I’ll just add this in here. To me once you begin to vote in the political system regularly, you become part of a voting system, or voting bloc, and with that comes political loyalties, comes political factions, becomes political favors. The voting allegiances, and political loyalties can come very quickly, but I think at a foundational level, I think what I would ask to that is well, what is it that we believe about how to change society? If we believe that through appropriate government policy, and through effective government leaders we can improve the society for people, then it makes a lot of sense, and that to me is - that’s really what progressivism is about, and in a sense the liberal - and I’m using liberal in a classical sense - idea that through the democratic process we can fix society is really at the foundation of that, and I would even take it when you think hard about it, it’s a little like saying, government can save society and government is our salvation, but government, the nations of this world they operate kind of fundamentally or I sometimes say it this way - they have an ethic of violence and coercion. At the end of the day, if a given policy seems good to you might be bad to someone else. Let’s say it’s wealth redistribution or something like that.

If you don’t see it their way, somebody with a gun is going to come to your house or to 20:02 - your neighbor’s house, and through the threat of violence or violence coerce a given behavior, but that to me - that’s the opposite of what Jesus does. It’s the opposite of what Jesus did. It’s the opposite of what He lived and taught, and in the Kingdom of God - if we have the faith to believe that the tools for enacting Kingdom policies are much more effective and more powerful are the tools of Jesus around things like suffering love. Things like telling the truth all the time. Things like giving rather than receiving. So I would encourage us to say, look, governments is not the answer to life’s problems. If I believed in political solutions, then I would feel that pull to vote, but if we believe that the Kingdom of God and Jesus are the solution, then perhaps we don’t feel the same pull there that we would otherwise.

21:07 - If we as Kingdom-focused Christians are not comfortable with voting, or using the political system to affect change, and bring about good things in society, what is our responsibility? What can we do? What should we do? What is our role as Kingdom Christians living here among a political system? My thoughts on that are we should do what Jesus did, and the power of that to change the world. The power of His example, and His life to change the world is just immeasurable, and it goes far beyond the United States. The United States is strong now, but they won’t be forever. The Roman empire was really strong when Jesus was born, and there’s been a myriad of other empires that have come, and have went, but the Kingdom of God - it still stands. Here it is. The gates of hell won’t prevail against it. So to me that’s the push. There’s a pastor from Chicago that goes by Pastor Choco says the local church is the only hope for the world, and it’s in us doing our part to do what Jesus did which is lay down His life, take up His cross, and serve others, and in so doing Jesus conquered death. He conquered sin. Gained the hope of - well Jesus did. He gained immortality.

Gave us the hope of immortality, and the resurrection of the dead. Harlan - spoke about him earlier - he used to say it like this. He probably got it from somewhere, but the cross is not only the means of salvation for society. It’s the method of salvation, and as we follow Jesus, that’s how we impact the world. As we give of ourselves rather than accumulating goods. The suffering love of Jesus - the extent to which we can embody that, and Jesus talked about telling the truth simply. No need to swear oaths. The power in staying married to one man, and one woman, and really loving people like that in true ways. That’s the power. So that’s the answer. So rather than embracing a methodology of violent coercion and guns and laws and rules and these sorts of things, embracing the way of Jesus, and the power of Jesus. Picking up the cross like Jesus did. That’s the way that we impact the world, and grow the Kingdom of God. What would you say to people listening, people watching who maybe are where you were right after you graduated Liberty? You know 22-years-old, 23-years-old.

I’m sure there are people who hold that view of what you did then, 24:18 - and if you could speak directly to them, or to your 23-year-old self, what would you say? Well if I was speaking to my 23-year-old self, I would say, you’re too hard-headed, and you need counseling. But in all seriousness when I came out of Liberty University, I had a lot of passion, and conviction, and a sense of rightness meaning like I felt like I had a pretty good grasp on where we needed to go politically as the United States, and if I were just to say something to myself then, I would say, you know what? Just keep in mind, you’re 22, 23 and yes, you’ve learned some things at Liberty University. I affirm those things, but continue to be a learner. Here’s some other perspectives you would want to read. I would recommend some books. Some of the ones which we’ve already spoken about. I would encourage my younger self, get to know people that have different perspectives that may come from this at a different angle, so that’s what I would say. Just continue to talk to people.

25:47 - Read some of the books around Christocentrism or the Kingdom kind of Christian mindset in order to push the thinking a little bit, and then if there’s kind of one thing is, I just would ask people to think about Jesus. What did Jesus do? What power did He tap into, and if we’re going to be Christians, if we’re going to be a Christian country, then I would expect every politician to be like Jesus, and embrace His model of non- violence, suffering love, welcoming immigrants, ministering to the ones that were downtrodden, the marginalized people of society. And people of the church are doing those things. Yes. The Kingdom of God is not restricted by any geographic location, and so the people of God, the Kingdom of God is welcoming immigrants. Yes, they are. I like to say, you know we belong to a nation. We use this term Kingdom Christian, and I get it, but Kingdom - they use the word Kingdom, but in a sense, the word “kingdom” just at that time particularly meant political state, and today we might use the word nation and our nation-state, so I like to say, we belong to a nation-state where Jesus is president, and immigration is open, and we have socialism, but it’s not coercive socialism. This is not Marxism. This is volitional socialism.

Followers of Jesus give rather than receive, and 27:30 - they care for each other, and it’s beautiful. Like to me the local church again is the only hope. The Kingdom of God is a beautiful thing, and it presents the answers to the world’s issues. The nation-states - you don’t have to study history long to see that there’s a lot of empty promises, a lot of broken dreams, and a lot of dead people at the hands of the nation-states. All right. Thank you everybody for tuning in. Thank you, Josh, for joining us. It’s good to spend time here together exploring this topic. .