 Well, hello everybody and welcome back to another episode of Anabaptist Perspectives. Thanks for tuning in. Today, I'm here in Effort of Pennsylvania with Josh Good, and Josh is the principal here at Effort of Midnight 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. Josh, we're good to have you here. Yeah, it's good to be here. 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 Effort Midnight School and 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 is 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 and prior to that, I grew up in the Lynchburg, Virginia area, 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. So let's back up, though, from where we are today and your journey in education. 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 in particular 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 four years later, I 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 the capital R and 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 sense of hopefulness, we hope the Republicans win. So from very early, when I was 7, 8, 9, 10, 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, wait a second here, why don't we vote? We're listening to 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 I choose not to because they might ask us to go to war at some point and then if I voted for them, did I vote for the war? But I started to kind of wonder, 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, in 1996, another election year, and in this case, I've been Clinton and Bush. To back up a little bit, Liberty University came out of the 1970s and it was a very famous theologian, Francis Schaefer, 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 and 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 was a senior who started Liberty University, was heavily influenced by this book, came out in 1976, and he had the epiphany that what we need is a religious kind of voting block that inserts itself into culture like Francis Schaefer 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 more majority, he founds Liberty University. I was a few years earlier, and I remember when I went to Liberty, hearing him speak, and he would often use this analogy, say, look, what we need is, as Christians, for too long, politics is like a football game. We've just been, this is what he used to say. We were just in the bleachers' cheering. I thought, well, yeah, that's what we were. And I'm not sure if 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. It's Jerry Falwell. So he said, that moral majority and this Christian voting block, we need Christian politicians and we need a voting block in the field to be our football team. And that's how we can affect positive change in society. And so, 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 the Lord, but the government is the minister of God and has 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 Schaefer 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 the 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 as Schaefer sort of laid out. I actually bought his book, it's still on my bookshelf, How Then Shall We Live, and was ready to be actively involved. And the one kind of hitch was I belonged to Bethelmanite 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 to 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 there's 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 Christian 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 shoot 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. 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, 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 is 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. There were kind of two brothers there in New York, Harlem Barnhart, Dwight Nisley that really came from a kingdom sort of Christian perspective and from a Christocentric perspective I used to argue a lot with Harlem 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 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 Meno Discuss and on Meno 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. Faithbuilders I think played a role. I would from afar read some of their work I read, Melvin Layman's essay would listen to the talks that the Calla Cuisie has, Steve BuBaker and the Sauders 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 their remnant and listen to some of the messages. And then later when the Fowlers of the Way people, Finney Greville and Company came along. I bought his book King Jesus Claims as Church. While that was happening I was also continuing to study and learn history and working in very liberal New York City and 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, 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 firsthand 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 you know that Christocentrism is starting with Jesus, his life and his witness and how we apply that, how his life and witness and his teachings and his death and resurrection and 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 really adopted that and therefore have rejected the nation state as you know 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 you know I moved a little bit at a time kind of away from that but I think that Anabaptist vision is compelling, I think 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 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 assault and light by those means and 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 and you know at a very sort of distant level you know we engage through things like zoning regulations and speed limits and these sorts of things so there's a little bit of a range you know when you think about our involvement with government and voting you know represents you know a very kind of direct participation in that. That said you know good people of the world I respect people that I respect do vote and I advocate for not voting but I acknowledge that you know that it's something that people feel some people feel like well you know what I wouldn't insist on it but if someone asked me for my opinion then you know in this particular policy like 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 know is 100% off I advocate against participating I think you know I'll just add this in here to me once you begin to vote in you know in in in the political system regularly you become you know part of a voting system or voting block and with that comes political loyalties comes political factions comes 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 you know how to change society you know if we believe that you know through appropriate government policy and through effective government you know government leaders we can you know improve the society for people then then it makes a lot of sense and that that to me is that's really what progressivism is about and in a sense you know the the liberal and I'm using liberal in a classical sense idea that through the democratic process we can fix society is is really at the at the foundation of that and I would even take it when you think hard about it you know it's it's a little like saying government can save society and government is the salvation is our salvation but you know government the nations of this world they operate kind of fundamentally or I sometimes say it this way they use it they have an ethic of violence and coercion at the end of the day if you know a given policy it seems good to you might be bad to someone else and say it's a wealthy distribution or something like that if you don't see it you know their way somebody with a gun is gonna come to your house or to your neighbor's house and through you know the threat of violence or violence a coerce you know a given behavior but you know that 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 you know in the kingdom of God if we had the faith to believe it that the tools for you know enacting kingdom policies are much more effective and more powerful are the tools of Jesus around you know things like suffering love things like telling the truth all the time things like giving rather than receiving so I would encourage you know I would encourage to say look you know governments is not you know is not the answer to you know to life's problems if I believe in political solutions then I would feel that that pool to vote but if we believe that that the kingdom of God and Jesus are the solution then perhaps we know feel feel the same pool there that that we would otherwise if we as kingdom focused Christians are not comfortable with voting or or using the political system to affect change and bring about good things in society what is our responsibility what what can we do what should we do what is our our rule 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 you know it's just you know immeasurable and it's it goes far beyond you know the United States you know the United States is strong now but they won't be forever the Roman Empire was really strong you know when Jesus was born and there's been a myriad of other empires that have come and have went but the kingdom of God you know it still stands here it is the gates of hell you know won't prevail against it so so to me that's the push you know there is a pastor from Chicago and goes by Pastor Choco says you know the local church is the only hope for the world and it's in you know us you know doing our part to to do what Jesus did which is lay down his life take up his cross you know and serve others and is so doing you know Jesus conquered death he conquests and gained the hope of you know Jesus did he gained immortality gave us the hope of immortality and the resurrection of the dead but it's in that you know Harlan spoke about him earlier he used to say it like this he probably got it from somewhere but you know the cross is not you know it's not only the means of salvation for society it's the method of salvation and it's you know 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 you know the extent to which we can embody that you know Jesus talked about telling the truth simply not no need to swear oaths the power in you know staying married to one man and one woman and and really you know loving people like that in in true ways that's the power so that to me is you know that's the answer so rather than you know embracing a methodology of violent coercion and guns and laws and rules and these sorts of things embracing you know the way of Jesus and the you know the power of Jesus picking up the cross like Jesus did that's 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 who hold that view of what you did then and if you could speak directly to them or to your 23 year old self what would you 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 me but in all seriousness when i came out of out of liberty university i had a lot of passion and and conviction and a sense of rightness meaning like i felt like i had a pretty good grasp on you know where we needed to go politically uh as the united states and uh and you know if i were just to to say something to myself then i would say you know what just keep in mind you know you're 22 or 23 and yes you've learned some things at liberty university you know i affirm those things but continue to be a learner uh you know here's here's some other perspectives you would want to read i would recommend some books some of the ones which we've we've already spoken about uh i would encourage you know my younger self you know get to know people that have you know different perspectives that may come from this at a different angle so that's what i would say just you know what continue to talk to people uh read you know some of the you know some of the books around you know christocentrism or the kingdom kind of christian mindset in order to push the thinking a little bit and then uh you know if there's kind of one thing is i just would ask people to you know think about jesus what did jesus do what power did he tap into and if you know if we're going to be christians if we're going to be a christian country then i would expect uh every politician to be like jesus and embrace you know his model of non-violent suffering love welcoming immigrants uh you know ministering to the ones that were downtrodden marginalized you know people of society and people of the church are doing those things yes you know that the kingdom of god yes is not not restricted by any geographic location and so the people of god the kingdom of god yeah is welcoming immigrants yes they are yeah i often say like i like to say you know we belong to a nation we use this term kingdom christian and i get it right but kingdom you know they use the word kingdom but in a sense you know the word kingdom just at that time particularly in that political state and you know today we might use the word nation in our nation state so i like to say you know we belong we belong to a nation state where jesus is president and immigration is open and you know we have socialism but it's not coercive socialism this is not marx and this is a volitional socialism followers of jesus give rather than receive and they care for each other and it's beautiful like to me the local church again you know is is the only hope like it's the kingdom of god is a beautiful thing and it you know it presents you know the answers to the world's issues the nation states you know you don't have to study history long to see that there's a lot of you know 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