Melissa M. Matthes, "When Sorrow Comes: The Power of Sermons from Pearl Harbor to Black Lives Matter" (Harvard UP, 2021)

Summary

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Podcast Summary

Podcast: New Books Network
Host: Richard Miller
Guest: Melissa M. Matthes, author of When Sorrow Comes: The Power of Sermons from Pearl Harbor to Black Lives Matter (Harvard UP, 2021)
Date: October 11, 2025
Episode Theme: Examining the political and theological significance of sermons preached in response to national crises in the U.S. from World War II to Black Lives Matter, and their role in mourning, civic education, and the negotiation between church and state.

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Episode Overview

This episode explores Melissa Matthes’s comprehensive study of American sermons delivered in the wake of national tragedies, from Pearl Harbor to Trayvon Martin. Matthes, a political philosopher and professor at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, discusses how these sermons both reflected and shaped public mourning, influenced civic memory, and negotiated the fraught boundaries between religious authority and state power. The conversation traces shifts in sermon rhetoric, the autonomy of the pulpit, theological declension, race and pluralism, the emergence of therapeutic models in ministry, and normative questions about mourning in contemporary America.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Origins and Motivation for the Study

• Matthes’s investigation began in divinity school, inspired by the apparent political engagement of post-9/11 sermons compared to earlier periods, particularly after Pearl Harbor ([04:42]).
• Questioned whether U.S. sermons during crisis had always been so politically charged, leading to a comparative study across 80 years.
• Motivation was both academic and personal, shaped by Matthes’s own experiences, including a close friend's bereavement after 9/11 ([65:55]).

Notable Quote:
"I was in divinity school... reading 9/11 sermons. And they seemed much more political to me.... So I wondered, oh, is this how American preachers have always responded during a crisis?"
—Melissa Matthes ([04:42])

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2. Pearl Harbor and the Autonomy of the Pulpit

• After Pearl Harbor, the federal government (notably FDR and LaGuardia) attempted to guide Protestant ministers via "canned sermons" to support the war, highlighting the pulpit’s perceived power ([08:08]).
• Clergy widely rejected state intervention, emphasizing their autonomy and the distinctiveness of religious authority.
• Protestant ministers were notably anti-war post-WWI, with the rise of conscientious objectors altering the landscape of religious patriotism.

Notable Quote:
"It was an epic fail. There were editorials all over... public rebukes of the idea that any civil servant thought they could teach a minister how to preach."
—Matthes ([08:56])

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3. Decline (Declension) of Theological Autonomy and the Rise of "Relevance"

• Matthes argues for a narrative of loss of pulpit autonomy, especially as religious leaders strove for "relevance," starting with thinkers like Reinhold Niebuhr ([14:53]).
• As churches began to adopt the language and paradigms of the state, their distinctive theological voice diminished.
• The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. marks a turning point, with Black ministers withdrawing from public political engagement, echoed in the emotionally charged sermons asking, "Is God Dead?" ([14:53]).

Notable Quote:
"Eventually, right in that declension narrative, there’s no reason for the church... because what is different or powerful or authoritative about a theological argument, if you are now making it in the language of the state?"
—Matthes ([14:53])

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4. Racial, Plural, and Generational Dynamics

• The narrative of declining religious authority is more true for white Protestant churches; Black and Asian churches showed moments of strong pulpit autonomy, especially during Japanese internment and the Civil Rights era ([12:19], [14:53], [50:44]).
• The effects of pluralism and immigration were less pronounced on pastoral imagination than the internal adoption of therapeutic paradigms and the challenge of newer spiritual movements ([29:29]).
• Later in the conversation, generational divides become salient: recent tragedies resonate differently across age groups, and younger generations are seen as potential sources of hope for new forms of civic mourning and faith expression ([55:41]).

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5. The Shift Toward Therapy and the Triumph of the Therapeutic

• Beginning in the 1970s, pastoral training increasingly adopted a therapeutic, self-improvement model, which Matthes critiques as contributing to the "diminutive" conception of God and a loss of theological depth ([33:29]).
• Churches shifted focus from communal, theologically-rooted mourning and justice to individualized emotional support and self-help.

Notable Quote:
"I also think it’s about a diminished conception of God... He’s not really that awe-inspiring, he’s not particularly demanding... This is a kind of conception of the transcendent that is banal."
—Matthes ([33:29])

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6. Collective Responsibility and the Language of Sin

• In the aftermath of JFK’s assassination, Protestant sermons were marked by a language of national culpability, collective sin, and responsibility—rhetoric that is largely absent from today’s discourse ([23:11]).
• The Wall Street Journal notably resisted this narrative at the time.

Notable Quote:
"They don’t yet feel like they are victims of the state apparatus or the victims of anything. They’re in charge. And if one of their own assassinates the President... this has to be a source of reflection."
—Matthes ([23:42])

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7. Norms and Practices of Mourning

• Proper mourning, according to Matthes, is long, communal, and focused on the relationship lost, not individual injury; hasty movements toward meaning or closure can undermine this process ([38:38]).
• Drawing on Freud, Judith Butler, and Augustine, Matthes links mourning to love and interdependence, suggesting the failure to mourn well is rooted partly in failures of communal attachment ([45:36]).

Notable Quotes:
"Mourning isn’t about revisiting the moment of violence over and over... it’s the willingness to be unraveled by one another."
—Matthes ([42:35])

"You’re saying not only do we not mourn well at times, but that’s because we don’t love well."
—Richard Miller ([45:36])

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8. The Power and Limits of Sermons Today – New Case Study

• The conversation pivots to the recent Charlie Kirk memorial, noting racial composition, the politicization of religious ritual, and the limits of sermons or religious events in fostering genuine unity ([48:47], [50:44]).
• The guest observes both continuity (state involvement in ritual, symbolic gestures) and departure (lack of national unity, generational specificity).

Notable Quote:
"I think that what Erica Kirk did in her memorial was quite profound... she modeled this mourning. And then to forgive her husband's murderer was remarkable."
—Matthes ([50:44])

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9. Optimism and Future Prospects for the Pulpit

• Matthes is less optimistic than at the book’s conclusion due to the relentless violence and failures to catalyze change after events like the Newtown shooting ([62:09]).
• Nonetheless, she remains hopeful about the unique potential of divinity schools as spaces for both rigorous thought and lived faith ([62:16]).

Notable Quote:
"Divinity schools still do give me hope. And I expect that different kinds of people now will want to go to divinity school because of this kind of violence. They will want to figure it out..."
—Matthes ([62:16])

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Memorable Quotes & Moments with Timestamps

• On the Polysemic Nature of Crisis Sermons:
  "The Pearl Harbor sermons don’t ask questions of theodicy... they understood that the bombing of Pearl Harbor was about politics and not about God, in ways that the 9/11 sermons seem to think that God was communicating through the fuselage..."
  —Matthes ([04:42])

• On Church-State Relations:
  "It is remarkable that ministers were so influential that the federal government wanted to impact what they would say from their pulpits..."
  —Matthes ([08:56])

• On the Decline of Theological Distinctiveness:
  "What happened was, the distinctiveness of a theological claim of church authority was lost because increasingly the church spoke the vernacular of the state..."
  —Matthes ([14:53])

• On Proper Mourning:
  "Mourning has to be about the loss of the relationship, not the injury to self… Proper mourning is also long... as opposed to how quickly we want to get to that place."
  —Matthes ([38:38])

• On the Erosion of National Unity:
  "The other ones that I write about did have this feeling of a national reach... is this about a generational crisis and that we have to think about it in generational terms...?"
  —Matthes ([55:41])

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Important Timestamps & Segments

• [04:42] — Origins of Matthes’s research, early observations about political tone.
• [08:08–12:19] — Pearl Harbor sermons, government attempts to guide clergy, resistance by ministers.
• [14:53] — Decline of pulpit autonomy, role of Niebuhr, Black church response to MLK assassination.
• [23:11–29:29] — JFK Assassination, language of collective culpability, effects of pluralism and therapy.
• [33:29] — Rise of the therapeutic model in mainline churches, critique of pastoral training.
• [38:38] — Normative account of mourning, differences between mourning and melancholy.
• [45:36] — Reflection on mourning, love, and community in light of Augustinian themes.
• [50:44–58:32] — Charlie Kirk memorial discussion, generational divides, symbolism and civil religion.
• [62:09–65:17] — Matthes’s tempered optimism, the ongoing significance of divinity schools.
• [65:55–67:46] — Personal motivation for the project, influence of post-9/11 experience and encouragement from mentors.

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Conclusion

Melissa Matthes’s When Sorrow Comes is a sweeping exploration of the sermon as a vessel for collective grief, civic identity, and the ongoing negotiation between church and state in America. This conversation foregrounds not only historical shifts in religious authority and ritual but also the urgent contemporary questions arising from ongoing violence and social division. While Matthes expresses some waning optimism about the nation’s capacity to mourn well and move forward, she still finds hope in emerging generations and theological education as spaces for meaningful engagement with public sorrow.

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Transcript

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[C]

Hi, and thanks for listening to New Books Network. I'm your host, Richard Miller. The United States has been no stranger to national violence and tragedy of late. But that fact shouldn't blind us to a longer history in American political life. Military aggression, political assassinations, terrorist attacks from enemies, both foreign and domestic. Church bombings, police violence against racial minorities. Over the past 80 years, such events have challenged Americans to think, to mourn, and to find direction. A central question for both politics and scholars of politics and religion is, in the wake of such national tragedies, to whom do American citizens turn for solace and direction? How have we managed these catastrophes in public life? To address these questions, Melissa M. Mathes, professor of government at the US Coast Guard Academy, examined hundreds of mostly Protestant sermons that were preached immediately after major national crises in the United States since the start of the Second World War. She organizes her study in roughly 2/4 century arcs. She first looks at sermons in response to the attack on Pearl harbor and the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. She then turns to the uprisings after the Rodney King verdict, the Oklahoma City bombing, The attacks on 9 11, the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting, and the death of Trayvon Martin. Understanding Christian sermons as both theological and political texts, Mathes looks at how pastors navigated the competing demands of religious and state authority. She also understands these sermons as sources of civic education and the formation of public memory, not unlike tragic theater in ancient Greece. Today I welcome Professor Mathes to discuss her book When Sorrow the Power of Sermons from Pearl harbor to Black Lives Matter, published by Harvard University Press in 2021. Welcome Melissa. It's great to have you here.

[D]

Thank you. I'm excited to have this conversation with you, Richard.

[C]

Great, Great. There's so much to discuss about your book, Melissa, and I look forward to getting into some of the weeds during our con. I'd like to start, though, with a more comprehensive question. I see a through line in your argument regarding the changing relationship of religious authority to state power. I wonder if you could begin by elaborating on what you discerned among the religious communities you studied.

[D]

Thank you, Richard. And I suppose it will be obvious to your listeners, but let me just state that any of the things that I say, all of this research and analysis is simply my own. I am not representing the U.S. coast Guard or the U.S. coast Guard Academy or any federal agency, even though I do indeed work for one. So what I first noticed was I was in divinity school and as part of a homiletics project was reading 911 sermons. And they seemed much more political to me than I am a political philosopher. That's what my PhD is in. So at first I thought, oh, this is just the way I am reading, because that's how I'm trained to think is politically. And so I wondered, oh, is this how Americans preachers have always responded during a crisis? And the obvious analogy to 911 is Pearl Harbor. So I started reading the Pearl harbor sermons and found that they were distinctly different, that the Pearl harbor sermons don't ask questions of theodicy. They were not asking where is God? They understood that the bombing of Pearl harbor was about politics and not about God in ways that the 911 sermons seem to think that God was communicating through the fuselage through the mayhem, through the violence. And they, of course, disagreed about exactly what God was communicating. And so that is what inaugurated my interest in thinking about how do Christians respond to a political crisis? How do they. How do they mourn? What do they. What do they say to their congregations? What's their conception of the relationship between church and state, as well as of national identity or even of patriotism? And so that's how I started. And that animated the crises that I looked at and the way I thought about the challenges of these crises. Now, as you noted, there are different kinds of crises. And you might say, in none of these crises was the United States truly at risk. Though during those experiences, Americans certainly felt disoriented. The banisters or the paradigms that had worked before no longer felt secure. And historically, and in each of these instances, Americans went to church, Christian went to church, even folks who hadn't been to church in quite a long time. And that is in itself interesting. Why, as Americans, do we do that? And so the book is trying to think through a little bit about those motivations, why we go to church when there's a crisis, and then the responsibility that ministers feel because their churches are full. And in the book, I mention that some of the sermons were about the minister saying, I don't know what to do. Like, I don't know how to preach to you. I'm used to preaching to a couple dozen, and now I have over 100 people in the pews.

[C]

So now, you know, one thing that you observe about Pearl harbor is that President Roosevelt tasked pastors, right, to speak right on behalf of the. Of the government, in many ways, rally support for US Military action. And there was a real pushback there. There was a real tension or dissonance between state power and religious authority. Can you say a little bit more about that? I mean, does that stand out to you as unique among the cases you look at over the arc of these 80 years?

[D]

Yes, it does stand out. And it was the laguardia, who was the head of a, I think it was the Civil Defense Office, it was called then, who created what Protestant ministers called the canned sermon. And so he sent it to ministers, kind of trying to give them ideas for how they could weave democracy and Christianity together, as well as support for the war or the potential war. The war hadn't yet been declared when he sent out the canned sermon. And I think it does a few things. First, it is remarkable that ministers were so influential that the federal government wanted to impact what they would say from their pulpits like, if you think today, what is the likelihood that President Trump or President Biden or any of the most recent presidents would send. Here's some ideas for how you should preach on something around national security. Right. So in the first instance, it's a reminder of how powerful church authority was, what kind of influence the federal government imagined that the church had. And it indeed did have. It was an epic fail. There were editorials all over every Christian magazine. There were rebukes, public rebukes of the idea that any civil servant thought that they could teach a minister how to preach. Now, it's important also your listeners probably know this, but Christian ministers were against getting involved in World War II, which is sort of surprising, I suppose, from the perspective of today, because we think of that as like the Great War. And but ministers had supported World War I, and that was supposed to be the war to end all wars. And when it didn't, they felt duped. They were furious. They had felt, many of them felt like they had already violated their Christian principles in supporting World War I, and so they were not going to support a second war. And this is when there was the rise of the conscientious objectors. And I talk a little bit about how that developed and some of the good work that conscientious objectors did, but how that also reconfigured the landscape that you could still be a patriot but make a religious objection to serving in the war. So that is quite different. And I don't have any other examples quite like that, though there are certainly elements of more of the state or the government appropriating Christian authority for its own uses rather than asking or seeking it. Right. I mean, Roosevelt even does write to Catholic bishops and ask, if he declares war, this is after Pearl harbor, will they support him? Because he doesn't want to have to fight the public opinion at home after the war is declared.

[C]

You know, I'm thinking about Reinhold Niebuhr, and he famously wrote a piece in 1940 called why the Christian Church Is Not Pacifist. And I've taught that essay many times and it needs to be prefaced with the background fact, as you say, that there was really a strong anti war sentiment among mainline Protestants. The Christian Century, which was bought and edited by Charles Clayton Morrison, was rather outspoken on matters of pacifism and the ethics of nonviolence. And so niebuhr's piece in 1940, trying to shift the ground entirely, was against that backdrop of anti war sentiments. And you're right, folks aren't aware of that picture today. And I think your chapter there is really eye opening on that score. There are related points here. There are many that we can pick up. And one is that you tell what would be called a declension narrative or a story of decline of, you might say, the autonomy of the pulpit vis a vis the state. And could you say more about that part of your study? At one level, Let me say two things, Melissa. @ one level, you know, those who avow this secularization thesis would say, well, that's not news. I mean, that's all part of the declining role of religion in public life. But you are saying, well, that's kind of complicated because certainly in white churches that's the case, but in black churches and in Asian churches during the Japanese internment in the 40s, it's something of a different story. You know, that the pulpit looks, if I read you correctly, to be more robust in its autonomy and its distance from the interests of the state. So I guess two first, am I reading you correctly? And if I am, do you mind elaborating?

[D]

So, yes, that is the argument. And you're right. In some ways it is an obvious argument. Right. And what I'm trying to demonstrate is a bit of the negotiation that ministers had with this shift, with this change. Some of the ways that they tried to resist it, some of the ways they accommodated it, how they shifted and accommodated it over the arc of the book. And they did this in different ways. And you mentioned one of the the people who, I think inadvertently, from my perspective, contributed to this declension narrative, and that is Reinhold Niebuhr. Because in a bid in some ways to make the church, quote unquote, relevant to say to church leaders, you have to get your hands dirty. You have to, you know this, you know that the theology, theology of how many angels are dancing on the head of a pin is not, not that anyone was really doing that, but this kind of caricature that church theologians were not or ministers were not really engaged in the world. And while there's much to recommend that, in some ways what happened was the distinctiveness of a theological claim of church authority was lost because increasingly the church spoke the vernacular of the state, make its appeal like, here's why our claims matter. Let's speak it. Let's do it in the language of the state. And eventually, right in that declension narrative, there's no reason for the church, right? Because what is different or powerful or authoritative about a theological argument, if you are now making it in the language of the state and using that language to those arguments, those values to legitimize your own Christian argument. And I think the most acute and for me, the most painful and I think poignant articulation of that is the minister's response to the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. Because there was a minister making Christian arguments in the public square politically. And with his assassination, many members of the black church especially felt like, that's it, we're done with this. We are not going to be in the public sphere making our Christian arguments. Because if King is assassinated, the Prince of peace, right, making the analogy to Jesus, there's no place for any of us here. So we're going back. We're going back to soup kitchens and homeless shelters and the things that we have always been doing. But we're done with. With the dirty politics that Reinhold Niebuhr, maybe not he specifically, but this kind of impetus led us to believe that we could do both. And it is of the probably, I suspect over a thousand sermons that I read for the arc of the book, the only ones that I read where ministers preach from the pulpit asking, is God dead? Which is trying to imagine sitting in your Baptist church or as an African American after the assassination. And the minister is like, we are lost and abandoned and we don't know. Of course, that is relatively quickly followed by a restoration of faith. But commitment that we are no longer going into politics, that changes again in the 70s and probably your listeners all know that the rise of evangelicals and you know, post Jimmy Carter and how that is rewritten again as like, okay, and by white churches, right? Black churches also step back in to the political sphere with some ministers running for office and so forth. But it is not right. After the assassination, it takes a decade or two.

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[C]

Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, there's clearly a different kind of, you might say, narrative arc there. I'm thinking of King's Letter from Birmingham Jail, which I've read many, many times. And in that piece, he makes a very strong case for the marriage, you might say, of Christian ideals and democratic ideals. And he's constantly going back and forth between biblical symbolism, biblical stories, American foundational texts, and heroes. I mean, there's a real effort to say, yeah, we all should be on the same page here, and we're being denied these democratic rights. And in fact, he's addressing this to white pastors, Right? So there's a real edge to this argument. So that's just another very interesting, you might say, backstory or back piece to that narrative. So let's turn a little bit. We'll get back to some of these matters, but let's turn to another really interesting set of observations you make about the response to the assassination of John Kennedy. And again, I'm old enough, pardon me, to remember exactly where I was that morning. And certainly churches were filled that Sunday, certainly in the immediate aftermath. But what I didn't know was that in Protestant churches, there was a sense that you entitled the chapter We All Killed Kennedy. I mean, it's very provocative. Okay, well. And it's not. That's not a neutral chapter title. Okay. So, you know, we all killed Kennedy and how Protestants thought that, you know, we're culpable, you know, for the rise of tensions, of animosities, of the Oswald. There's a sense of collective sin. And that language was used. Right.

[D]

I guess.

[C]

You know, again, a couple of questions. You know, take them in any. That just seems so foreign. I don't hear that language of collective national culpability and certainly the theological language of sin. So is that another distinctive moment in this arc in your mind, or am I perhaps exaggerating what I felt was really a strong claim?

[D]

I do think it is Distinctive and powerful. And I think you're right that there is another declension from that that we are not likely today to hear a sense of collective culpability. And we can talk for perhaps why that might be for today. But then I think there's two things at work, and there's the sense of patriotism and belonging and that, you know, we all own the country. And of Christians, right. This is again, before the assassination of King, feeling like they have agency, that they are determining how the world is and how people live. They don't yet feel like they are victims of the state apparatus or the victims of anything. They're in charge. And if one of their own assassinates the President of the United States, meaning an American citizen, then this has to be a source of reflection and examination. And some of the sermons that are also particularly powerful are the ones that the ministers of Dallas read, because they don't blame the Secret Service, which is. I think what I thought I was going to read was there would be lots of editorials about, like, how security had failed and where was the Secret Service and why, you know, and instead it was, where were the Christians? How did Oswald go so haywire? How come no one ever mentored him? No one took care of his family or his wife or his mother. And this sense that this was a shared obligation, that we had failed. And it's the period when America is, as you know, Post World War II, entering the world stage. And so there's a sense of humiliation. I mean, there is a kind of imperial undertone to some of the criticism. Like, we are supposed to be the dominant power, and we are behaving like we're a developing nation, like, this is horrible, like it says. And then they name other countries that maybe assassinate their leaders or their presidents, but surely we don't do that now after so much violence in America, I think you're not likely to hear a claim that, well, we don't do this. This isn't who we are. We're now, I think, regretfully anesthetized to a certain amount of violence. And the forensics, like, I think of it as, like, everyone thinks they're on a police procedural and they're going to, like, figure out why this criminal did whatever he or she did. And that's where so much of our energy is directed. And some of that is the technologies that are available to us, social media and so forth. But the examination tends not to be about a culture, but about the criminal.

[C]

Interesting.

[D]

The Wall Street Journal. I should. I should note in Fairness that the Wall Street Journal's editorial did say. And I think the headline was, it is not a collective fault. And the Wall Street Journal, of all the paper, you know, kind of national papers of the time, was the only one that said, you know, Lee Harvey Oswald killed Kennedy. This is not the fault of Americans, like, really tried to distance. And I think now we say the only person who killed is the person who shot the gun as a way to prevent more violence or the contagion of violence. I think the Wall Street Journal did it in part to maintain the increasing power and respect that America had earned post World War II. So it didn't want Americans to be flagellating itself. Like, oh, wait, we're terrible. What did we do? I think the Wall Street Journal was like, no, we're still awesome.

[C]

Okay. Yeah. On this score, I wondered, and this is a question I have about the book more generally, but, you know, when you think about 1963 and these Protestant ministers, I think they could, you know, reasonably assume that it's what they're. What they're thinking about is still a Christian culture. Right. And I'm wondering about the effects of immigration and pluralism on the, you might say, the imagination of Christian pastors as we move out of the 60s into the 70s, 80s, 90s, et cetera. I mean, as we shift from the first three chapters, Pearl Harbor, Kennedy, King, and then to Rodney King, 9, 11, et cetera, is it also fair to say that once we turn to these later moments, these pastors just can't make that same assumption, that there is a kind of consensus about there being a Christian America to which they can speak?

[D]

I think the assumption phrase not because of immigration or because of plurality of congregants, because. And that since the turn of the last century has been part of America's story, right? The integration, assimilation, accommodation of a diverse group of people. And I think some of it is the advent. I mean, I argue this of a kind of therapeutic model and that this, surprisingly, is not from outside divinity schools or seminaries, but internal to it. Now, maybe it's an attempt to expand the role of ministers. I mean, ministers have always been a source of pastoral care. You know, people come to ministers with their marriage problems or problems, raising their children or whatever. But it's during that period when ministers really take on this therapeutic model, like as if they are therapists, as if what they are doing is not trying to create the community or city of God, but enhance the city of man with kind of self improvement or self help. And. And so I view that as one of the reasons, not because they have a diminished sense of themselves, but a kind of expanded sense of like, oh, this, you know, we should be part of this development as therapy and psychology and transcendental meditation. Now maybe it's more the kind of threat of new religions that make ministers in the late 60s and 70s think we have to expand the purview of what we offer. And so, I mean, I don't really haven't explored or thought about what's the trigger for that particular change. What do you think might be at stake for that?

[C]

Well, you know what's interesting on this score, I don't have an answer, but I found it really suggestive when you included this idea. And I'll reference your discussion of King, you know, that the church was ceding authority to the paradigms of therapy and state power. And I thought, I wonder if she's saying that, and I really mean this as a question, that the training of pastors is incorporating more and more of a broadly speaking therapeutic model, sort of the triumph of the therapeutic and rife's sense of the term. Right. And that I wondered if there wasn't an internal critique of Christian training, you might say, or pastoral training. Pardon me, pastoral training, that it's becoming a little too touchy feely that I'm asking this, that it's becoming. Perhaps you use the word narcissism occasionally when you reference the therapeutic model. And I thought, you know, she's doing this very gently, but I wonder if there isn't more in her mind here that she might reveal. So here I am asking you about this. If there's a kind of, if there's a kind of critique of the training of Christian ministers, in your view that needs to be named.

[D]

Yes, there is a critique and it is that thread line, not fully articulated is about what happens to pastoral care and that reconfiguration of pastoral care that. Right. That I think has become or did become less theological. I also think it's about a diminished conception of God. God is in this period and I'd say to today becoming diminutive, smaller. He's not really that awe inspiring, he's not particularly demanding. And that's where I think the narcissism, like the sense of obligation and of requirements. Right. That perhaps as a Christian the question should be not why did this happen, but what should I do? Right. So I think those two things are related, that if pastoral care is this self examination and I mean some of my divinity school students will laugh, but the One that I think captures it is like the Jesus take the wheel.

[E]

Right.

[D]

Like this is a kind of conception of the transcendent that is banal. Right. Like this is. This is not Barth's conception of God. Right. Which is there should be a little bit of trembling. And so maybe that is me overlaying my own. You can hear it a little annoyance with. With this God that now is like, just so involved and invested in the quodidian that, you know, he himself is also now like a therapist. You know, he's going to take the wheel, he's going to hand out favors or whatever. And that is really the argument of the chapter on the Oklahoma bombing, like the national church of the tragedy. Right. And so, yes, I think it's probably more subtle in the book than as I just articulated it.

[C]

Yeah, no, it is. So I thought, well, she did go to Yale. And I think there's already in it, there is the otherness of God is in many ways what you're saying is being lost. Right. The radical difference the know that God can articulate. Right. So I thought, and again, not to pursue this too much more, but that there was really a theological critique going on in this book, you know, that the declension narrative is not just about, let's say, the decline of religious authority in American public life because there are other authorities that are capturing the imagination and allegiances of everyday people. But that there has been a theological change that you are gesturing toward, you're marking in your account. So, yeah, let's turn to one case before the Oklahoma City bottoming, and that's your chapter on the Rodney King riots. You know, you say that in George Bush's national address that he papered over racial tensions in Los Angeles and he drew a false equivalence between the beating of Rodney King and the beating of a white truck driver, Reginald Denny, by blacks. You know, in his speech. And your point, you make a couple of points. One is that the state failed to mourn properly. There's a real sense in the book that there are right and wrong ways to mourn. Right. There's a normative account of good morning, as it were. Pardon me, but that's what's going on here now. But then you say in this failing. So I want to just out that, as it were, that there really is that distinction you want to draw. And that Bush's failure, quote, sowed the seeds that would mature grotesquely into more videos of even greater police brutality resulting in the deaths of unarmed African Americans. So you suggest that the power of Mourning is really quite profound. And that failing to mourn properly generates really damaging downstream effects. Could you just. Just say more about that? I mean, that's a really intriguing kind of, you know, explanatory claim that I'm interested in hearing you speak to.

[D]

So the, the arguments about mourning are first, that every religious tradition, not just Christianity, has rituals of mourning, in part because we recognize as human beings how significant it is to mourn as a community. Right. So that's the first. And that the mourning has to be about the loss of the relationship, not the injury to self. Right. And this is partially or maybe derived from Freud's conception of the difference between mourning and melancholy. Right. So when we're melancholy, we feel this like, why did this happen to me? But when we're mourning, we say, what has been lost? My relationship with this person, this person's contribution, Creativity, imagination, friendship in the world. Right. So those are two different things. So I think it's proper. Mourning is also long. And I think part of my normative critique is this, like, move on going forward, you know, the, the language that now we. That we use, even that you didn't die in vain, Right. If it's a tragic, inexplicable death, that I'm going to do something to make it as if your death has meaning and purpose, which may be necessary, but that's not the same as mourning. And so part of my critique is how quickly we want to get to that, like that place, as opposed to being able to tolerate, I suppose, some amount of grief. The last thing about what I named there as the false equivalence is the. I think my political theory heart wants there to always be some account of power, that all human life is grievable, of course, right? Like these are two dead men for no good reason, violent, brutal deaths. And so in that way they are equivalent. And yet they are different because one is killed by a mob and in a kind of angry vengeance, and one is killed by those who we expect to protect us and to keep us safe. Law enforcement, yes, they're both videoed and then they're reproduced. And I think I mentioned in the book, and I still have this conversation with my students now about, do you watch these videos or not? What does it mean to watch them? What is it you're seeking when you watch? What are you doing with the kind of repetition? And I think it is, I'm going to try to remember now, but it's a African American public intellectual who says, don't watch these videos because they are the source of Terror. Like, do you really want to see another person beaten or assassinated or killed? I mean, I think we're having some of this conversation. I know I've been having it with my son about the Charlie Kirk video, about its circulation still. I mean, I think that we, you know, they tried to take it down, but it's still circulating. And. And so mourning isn't about revisiting the moment of violence over and over and over. You know, watching the planes go into the towers yet again.

[C]

There's a cruder film with Kennedy.

[D]

Yes, Right. Like over. So that probably is something that someone who's a social psychologist could better explain, like why. Why are we so fascinated by this? Why? You know, maybe it's an attempt to control it. Like, if I watch it again, I know what the outcome's gonna be, but I'll feel like I have some command of it. And that, I think is part of mourning is the willingness to be unraveled by one another. If you care about or love someone, you are undone when they are dead. And in an interconnected community, I'm not saying we should be, you know, hysterical and unable to function as a community, but it should give us enough pause that we do reassess and rethink and revalue why it matters that we live together in communities, whether it's in our neighborhoods and so forth. And I don't think. I think. I'm not sure that we are doing that or that we did do that at. In these instances. Yeah, so.

[C]

So I'm going to throw a little bit of a curveball at you. I hear two voices in your comments. One I think you cite, and that's Judith Butler.

[D]

Yes.

[C]

Grievability and mourning. Right. And precarity and being undone.

[D]

That's Freud. But she cites him, too. Yes.

[C]

The other, though, and this is a curveball, and he's not cited. So this is me speaking, Melissa, and that is Augustine, you know, because Augustine is, I think, a great theologian of grief. Certainly in Confessions, you know, he grieves the loss of his childhood friend. He grieves the loss of his mother very profoundly. And in both cases. And they're different, different moments in his life, and he's saying different things, but in both cases, he's linking grief to love, you know, that we wouldn't grieve if we weren't attached rather profoundly to another person, community, ideal, etc. Right. And so in many ways. Now, forgive me for this, but I'm just going to try this out on you. Okay? You know, you're saying not only do we not mourn well at times, but that's because we don't love. Well, that there's something about our relationships that prevent us from having proper mourning right now. That's probably the subject of another book. But I'm wondering, am I putting words or thoughts, Am I putting words in your mouth or am I coming close to some of your general intuitions here?

[D]

Yeah, I mean, it's striking that the first semester I was in divinity school, I took a class on Augustine and we were reading the Confessions. So perhaps you're right, like uncited. But certainly it is threaded through my own theological education and how I do think about love and politics and interconnectedness. And there's also this tradition, I think, in the history of political theory. Right. Like Rousseau is a grief stricken theorist. Right. Sometimes to the great annoyance of his readers, but someone who shows you how vitally important being in community was to him and the loss of that, not just politically because he's a Republican. Small R. And there's like this sense of brotherhood and the kind of noisiness, I think that's what Hannah Arendt calls it, of a republic, but also that you don't know who you are without these others, which is also a very Greek idea. My own mentor, Peter Yubin, certainly as a political philosopher, really made that point that the etymology of the word idiot is someone who's alone. And so to be in community is to be fully human as well. So you're right. This would be another book. So maybe you can write it. I'll help you edit.

[C]

All right.

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[C]

So let's, let's. You mentioned Charlie Kirk and I can't resist, you know, asking a few questions along the lines of that memorial. You know, it's so fresh, I think, in, in the, the, the minds of, I suspect our listeners. First of all, I noticed that it was, the event was really quite Caucasian, you know, and I did some online reading around the responses to the Kirk memorial and I couldn't help but note a something of a parallel, you know, between this event and some earlier events. You talk about, you know, you talked about different pictures of God, you know, in black and white churches. Right. In black churches a God that is more interventionist and more, more, more other. But, but right. More as it were, more of an active presence. And in white churches, a God that needs human pendant. Right. And here I detected, and again, I'm oversimplifying, but just for the sake of fixing ideas in this case, there was a lot of argument about Jesus, about what Jesus represents and a real critique of this kind of language, of division, of animosity, of frankly hatred. Trump saying he hates his enemies. Right. So I guess, you know, that's just something for us to I guess kick around a little bit. Did what would you, is there more to say on that score or is that pretty much it?

[D]

I think that what Erica Kirk did in her memorial was quite profound and that she modeled this morning. Right. Like talking about, you know, her marriage and the specificity of her relationship with her husband and seeing his dead body and the wound. Like she made that, I think visceral for all of us listening. And then to forgive her husband's murderer was remarkable. And so I think she did as much as any human could to turn down the noise around who is this person? Are they, you know, what political party do they, you know, belong to and how are we going to like, I think she that was beautiful, you know, and what is Cornell west says, you know, justice is love made public. And that's what that felt like. Now I don't, I haven't been like reading all the comments online, but I have college age children and they tell me that it did not stop the noise. Right, like that. There's still plenty of vitriol on both sides. And, and this goes back to your earlier point about Christian ministers. There was a recent poll that showed that it's not quite a majority, but somewhere in the 40%iles of Americans think that vigilante justice is the way that things will change or how to get things done. That is really impoverished conception of what it means to influence your environment or change a culture or just change the mind of your neighbor, is if you think that things have come to such a pass that the best we can hope for is vigilante justice, you know, that I will have to, you know, persuade you at the point of a gun.

[C]

So, yeah, but certainly she does stand out. But there were other parts of that memorial that I just want to tick off and then get a response from you because I think that it both confirms so much of what you're arguing, but also offers something of a departure. So let me just point out a couple of things in terms of the relationship between church and state and, you know, political power, religious authority. So, you know, he had his pastor up there, Rob McCoy, and, you know, he went out of his way to say, well, look, you know, you all are talking about the political right and, you know, championing Charlie Kirk for what he did in terms of trying to create political conversations, etc. But he understood his. His political work is providing the on ramp to Jesus. Right. That's kind of interesting. RFK likened Charlie Kirk to Jesus Christ. JD Vance called him a hero for the United States and a martyr for his faith. Pete Hegseth said, in effect. Well, not in effect, but, well, you know, here we are in the stadium, but it's really Charlie's church, you know, and then to top things off here you have the state reaching into our lives by having the flags flown at half mast as if he were a public official. Right. And so one level I thought, yeah, this does confirm her account of, you might say, the increasing, the more muscular role of the state in creating religious rituals of mourning. But in the other examples you cite, these are moments of national unity, that is to say, the ones you talk about. And this one made no effort to do that. And so I just wondered how you digested all of that vis a vis your work, because it just struck me as a very interesting test case, you might say, for the, the research you. You did for the book.

[D]

First, probably most obviously, I haven't digested it. I'm not sure I have Any keen insights? I think I am struck on this one about how generationally specific it is. Right. The other ones that I write about did have this feeling of a national reach. And for people of our generation, I think, you know, I know some of my colleagues, like, had not heard of him. Right. There would be, you know, if you're a physics professor or, you know, you're a life insurance agent, you might never have. Right. So I think that part is interesting to me is thinking about, is this about a generational crisis and that we have to think about it in generational terms and maybe not in national terms. In that way, I still feel optimistic because like you, I teach young people and they keep you optimistic. Right. Because they're not ossified, they're more open and agile and willing to be persuaded. I think it's probably more difficult for middle aged people to change their minds. Right. So that way, I think with all the social media, perhaps they will find a way to mourn and to move us forward in ways that some of the elders are not quite able to do. I also hear in the citations that you gave a kind of civil religion. So this is something that, you know, Skip Stout writes about that has been since the early revivals of the, you know, 1780s and 1820s, right. This kind of use by political figures of kind of talismans that are meant to remind you of Christianity, but not quite. Right. They don't have deep theological tethers, but they gesture toward Christianity or Judaism, depending on the context, or Islam, but they're not really of the religious tradition. So I suppose when I hear these kind of one offs, you know, this is Charlie's church, I view that as kind of civil religion and not something that really tells us anything particularly remarkable about Christianity or church and state relations or.

[C]

Right.

[D]

This is. These are the symbols on a positive way, in terms of interpreting the flags at half mast, we could say, I don't know that we are doing this, but we could say it was a recognition that something very important had been lost. And a man, certainly a father, a husband, but something about our community is broken. That on a beautiful day in Utah, on a college campus, a man is murdered and the video is viral. Like, this should give everyone pause. So if the half mast flag is a reminder, like, we're not done with this, we need to keep thinking about this, we need to mourn together. We need to talk and think and maybe recollect about our past violence. Like, you know, I think Ezra Klein, along with others, Shapiro made the same, like Inventory of all of the violence that has happened just in the last seven or eight months. Both of them on their talk shows or podcasts reminded their listeners, like, you know, children were murdered praying on the first day of school, like in a church. You know, Mormons were just murdered three days ago in a church. Again. Right. Like so the flag at half mast. I tried to think of it as not the state telling me who matters, but that this is a community and we should all be reflecting. Now. We need some leaders to help us do that, which is why I'm hoping those school students are ready to go theologically armed.

[C]

So let me say one thing and then I'll then return to your optimism. I think that is a very charitable reading of that flag at half mast. So thank you for that. Let's turn to your optimism a bit. You conclude the book by saying that certainly part of the argument has been that it would be good for American democracy for Protestant ministers to once again claim the autonomy of the Sunday sermon and to use the pulpit as a robust platform for American civic education. And, you know, so you end on this note where I think this is a good idea. We need to reclaim this, you might say, this institution of the Protestant preached word. And that you add that. Look, I don't think that I'm putting words in. I'm restating. I'm not saying that they have the answer, but they provide a language, they provide a set of symbols, they enrich the imagination about what we should care about and what we should grieve. So do you still have that optimism? I mean, what would you say about, let's say, after Kirk or just after all of these events that Ezra Klein, for example, lists. What's your thinking there?

[D]

I don't know if I'm as optimistic as I was at the conclusion of.

[C]

The book.

[D]

Because the violence has been relentless. Right. School shootings and I live in Connecticut. And if we weren't able to make progress after the Newtown shooting, I'm not sure that there's at least, you know, for the, for us right now. Right. Because there couldn't have been any greater horror for a parent than to like, it was just the, the whole thing, you know, right around Christmas, like it. It. The constellation of repulsion about that violence. So I'm not quite as optimistic, but. Or, and I still think that divinity schools are this really interesting place because they are practitioners of faith and intellectuals and, you know, like the divinity schools are in some ways a little pre modern. Right. And you know, at Yale, the divinity school is on the hill. And, you know, the academic religious studies is down the hill. And there's a certain kind of symbolism to that and antagonism. Like, why do we still have a divinity school? You know, like, I mean, Yale is one of the most advanced and sophisticated medical hospitals in the world. And yet, you know, from certain perspectives, like. And then we have the God squad on the hill. Like, what? And I think my optimism comes because to have that is so unusual, to have the intellectual rigor and dedication aligned with people who are faithful, who do want to make the world a better place, who are articulating a different conception of justice. I think divinity schools still do give me hope. And I expect that different kinds of people now will want to go to divinity school because of this kind of violence. They will want to figure it out. How do I maintain my conception of free speech along with my theological principles of forgiveness or whatever this iteration creates? Like, after 9 11, there was a surge, right? I mean, it's ironic, right? Like, there's a surge in recruitment into the military and a surge at divinity schools. And I suppose that's where my optimism is that I don't know what that alchemy of a divinity school for this generation will create, But I suppose I do feel some optimism that that is a really good place to start or to look or to hope.

[C]

Excellent. That is a very, very full answer. I like it a lot. And I really very much appreciate, in a sense, filling out your reasons. Let's conclude with, you might say, a personal question. And that is, you know, what motivated you to take on this study? I mean, what itch did you want to scratch? What provoked you to start turning to these sermons and then all of a sudden embark on this rather ambitious research project?

[D]

So in some ways, it is because of 911 is really what started it. When I was in divinity school, one of my closest friends, her husband was murdered that day, and she and I am in divinity school. We were there for different reasons, but we did a lot of work on Christian Muslim reconciliation in the years that we were at divinity school together. And so that did start me thinking about 9 11, theologically looking at sermons. And then it was the influence, not surprisingly, of two of my professors, Skip Stout and Nora Tisdale, who said, everybody's writing books that are about one thing, one period, one era. Like, write a book that traces an arc. And you might be wrong about some of the specifics, but if you can imagine it will have a contribution that other people can then go and figure out maybe more of the specifics. So I really owe it to them telling me to like think bigger and not to write. You know what political theorists like to write is you know the hundredth version of Machiavelli's conception of Fortuna. Like that I can do. So like let's do that again and just you know wordsmith a little bit about so it was their encouragement and I think this is why I have the optimism about divinity school because I read so widely there things that I wouldn't have read as a political philosopher that then helped me reinterpret what I understood about politics.

[C]

Fantastic. Well thank you for that and let me say by way of wrapping up congratulations this book and thank you for this great conversation. I'm really grateful and nice to meet you and to learn more about your thinking and good luck with your teaching and your next research project. I'm confident it will be really exciting. So thank you.

[D]

Thank you. Thank you. Richard.

[C]

Sam.