What does it mean to be a witnessing professional in the climate crisis?
What responsibility do scientists, doctors, journalists, lawyers, military officers and public health officials have to speak out and share their message of truth with the world? How does the religious concept of bearing witness translate to this secular context? And what can you and I do to become constructive witnesses for climate change?
Dr. Evan Kuehn is an Assistant Professor of Informational Literacy at North Park University and the author of Troeltsch’s Eschatological Absolute and Theology Compromised: Schleiermacher, Troeltsch, and the Possibility of a Sociological Theology. On this episode of Reversing Climate Change, Dr. Kuehn joins Ross to discuss the recent Dædalus issue on Witnessing Climate Change, describing what it means to be a witness, how the concept shifts from a sacred to a secular context, and what risks are associated with witnessing in public as a professional.
Dr. Kuehn explores Robert Socolow’s idea of witnessing for the middle to depolarize the climate conversation, explaining what it looks like to engage in situational ethics and sharing how he deals with extreme views and guillotine memes. Listen in for Dr. Kuehn’s insight around the Jewish tradition of preserving social criticism and learn what you can do to be a middle builder and serve as a constructive witness for climate change.
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There are so many things referenced in this episode and not much space to add them all here unfortunately. If Anchor ups their character cap we will add them all back in.
N.B. Ross couldn't remember at the time of recording which scholar provided that insight about Jewish scripture preserving social criticism in this episode, but is pretty sure it came from Amy-Jill Levine, and most likely her Great Courses lecture series on the Old Testament.
Dr. Evan Kuehn on Reversing Climate Change Bonus Episode
We’re Doomed. Now What? Essays on War and Climate Change by Roy Scranton
What Is the Bible? How an Ancient Library of Poems, Letters, and Stories Can Transform the Way You Think and Feel About Everything by Rob Bell
‘What is the Social Responsibility of Climate Scientists?’ by Naomi Oreskes
‘Witnessing for the Middle to Depolarize the Climate Change Conversation’ by Robert H. Socolow
Full Transcript
Ross Kenyon: Hello and welcome to the Reversing Climate Change Podcast. I’m Ross Kenyon. I am the Creative Editor at Nori’s Carbon Removal Marketplace. Today I have with me an alumnus, Dr. Evan Keen, Assistant Professor of Information Literacy at North Park University. Hey, Evan. Hey, good to be back. Good to have you back. Last time you were on, we were talking about a piece you wrote called Is the Climate Crisis a Secular Eschatology? And you recently pitched me on a new issue of the academic journal Daedalus called Witnessing Climate Change, and you wanted to talk about, well...
Maybe I don’t want to put words in your mouth too much, but what does it mean to be a witness in the context of climate change? How do these secular conversations relate to religious Christian uses of the term witness? And I bet a whole bunch of stuff is going to fall out of that as we start poking at it. Is that an okay way
Dr. Evan Kuehn: to start? Exactly, yeah. Yeah, I told you before, I was looking for an excuse to get back on here, and I saw the Daedalus issue called Witnessing Climate Change, and that piqued my interest. So that was my excuse to get back here.
Ross Kenyon: It’s good. And if any former guests are listening, you are always welcome to do so. And hey, it makes my job pretty easy if you’re able to pitch me a cool show. Well, Evan, why don’t you start us at the beginning here? Why did this issue catch your eye? And what exactly does it mean to be a witness?
Dr. Evan Kuehn: So Daedalus, first of all, is a quarterly journal that’s published by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. So usually it’s a journal that covers different themes in academic life, and it’s often fellows of the academy that are writing for it. So they cover... Topics of interest to scholars, but then, you know, this is kind of an odd topic here of witnessing professional. It’s not a term that we hear much. It definitely has kind of a religious valence to it. When I think of witness, the first thing I thought of when I read about that was just this deep history of witnesses in the Abrahamic religions from the Bible to the present day people who knock on your door and try to evangelize to you.
And another aspect of it actually is witnessing has a deep history. 20th century history, especially related to the Holocaust and to lots of other atrocities around the world where we have witnesses to events of human suffering that bring our attention to it. So both those aspects, I think, make witness a really powerful term to talk about. But then to pair it, first of all, with climate change and then with the idea of professionals and really of professional ethics. How do scholars and lawyers and doctors talk about witnessing?
It was just a really fascinating pairing to me. So I think it’s an important conversation. It’s a bit odd that we don’t normally talk about it in those terms.
Ross Kenyon: I think so too. They don’t think about it in that scriptural sense where I think almost all of the prophets are social critics and they are advocates for various types of social justice and ways that Israel is failing in its relationship or Israel and Judah at various points, failing in its relationship with God and not keeping their side of the bargain or the covenant, you could say, and ways that they can redeem themselves before some horrible calamity comes a calling. Is that related to the idea of being a witness or is it different somehow?
Dr. Evan Kuehn: Yeah, that’s definitely related. So, and lots of times God will call a prophet his witness. So this comes up, like Isaiah, it’s talked about, you are my witnesses. When he’s speaking to prophets, and you’re right, often it is in antagonism to the powers that be as well. Because Kings don’t like to be told that they’re doing the wrong thing, that they’re working against what God has commanded them. And so these prophets are sent to bring a critical social word. But the idea that they’re witnessing, I think, is also that they...
They are bringing testimony in a public place to what they’ve seen and to what they’ve heard. And that’s really why sort of the prophet gets this title of the witness, I think. It’s often connected with signs and wonders. So there’s this idea of sort of making plain to a new audience, whether it’s the public or whether it’s those in powers, what message needs to be conveyed to them at a particular time.
Ross Kenyon: I’ve been reading the Bible cover to cover this year for the first time ever. Good. Yeah, that’s been quite an exercise. And I forget where I got this, but I had seen some scholar remark that... The Jewish religious tradition is so unique and interesting, at least partially because they preserve the work of social criticism over something that was more official or from the king. Like, why would you enshrine these people who are, you know, just saying how your people are bad and misbehaving in all these ways?
That seemingly has to be very unique as far as a literary tradition.
Dr. Evan Kuehn: Yeah, yeah. There’s a lot that religion can, I think, rightly be criticized for of sort of those in power giving an ideological story that suits their purposes. But you’re right, you know, through the cracks We have a whole series of texts that witness themselves to criticism of a people who is called the chosen people of God, and yet part of that special relationship is being, We see that in the Christian tradition that, you know, also in the sense of confession, the importance of atonement as well. And this is all because to be the people of God, you need to listen to what God says.
And yeah, I think you’re right. It’s shot through and it’s not just a matter of So often religion is understood in overly individualized terms, but it’s not just a matter of individual repentance for this or that sin, although there’s plenty of that as well. Often it is the rulers who are in need of repentance of particular sins like that, but it’s also the social sins. It’s the sins of the people turning away from what they should be paying attention to.
Ross Kenyon: Is this also why, I know people have made this link explicitly, or they may already know it, but the African American theological experience in the United States has leaned so much more heavily on the Old Testament for Christians relative to perhaps other sects or ethnic groups.
Dr. Evan Kuehn: Yeah, and in particular stories like the story of the Exodus out of Egypt, the liberation of the people, something like that is another example of where the work of salvation and the work of redeeming people isn’t separated from the prophetic tradition. Moses and Aaron were bringing the word of God to Pharaoh. And in the same way, works of social liberation today in the African American community and elsewhere draw on those particular, that heart of the message of the Hebrew Bible. Because it pairs with it both the concern of God for his people, but also the fact that there are social implications of that concern, right?
Yeah, and I think it does taps into that tradition because it carries the message that’s still relevant today.
Ross Kenyon: I’m trying to find the right way to say this, and I’m going to make an unfair dichotomy here, and you can say, hey, there’s more to this story. The Old Testament or Hebrew scripture, you could say, that’s more what Jewish folks call it. Calling it Old Testament, if you’re listening, is definitely a Christian framing. But when I think about the Old Testament, I’m thinking about it as a story primarily of the Jewish people. When I think about Christianity, because my understanding is that the Apostle Paul, the whole point is universalizing out from Jewish tradition.
Israel is no longer merely the chosen people of God. It’s sort of a way for Gentiles and the whole world to do this. But in a funny sort of twist, making it a universal ethos rather than an ethnic one is Makes it individual. So Christians, one of the terms you might have heard is a personal relationship with Jesus that I associate primarily with Protestantism. But that’s quite individualistic. But the Old Testament seems like it’s a story of a collective group of people trying to find freedom and, I don’t know, sort of oneness with God that they sort of keep falling short of and keep trying over and over to get to.
Is that too simple of a story to tell?
Dr. Evan Kuehn: I think you can always draw that dichotomy throughout the New Testament, Paul especially, but all over the place, they’re quoting from the Old Testament. So I think there’s always plenty of room to make it a both and rather than an either or. But I don’t think you’re wrong to draw a distinction like that. It’s interesting, and there are all kinds of So as much as... We’re talking on a global scale now. It does make the message very personal and it makes each of us think about humanity, you know, with a capital H and in terms of a particular neighbor.
That we can be engaged with. So there’s the golden rule that’s, you know, not only in the Jewish and Christian traditions, but others as well. You know, just do unto others as you would have them do unto you. But then also Jesus in the New Testament talks about when you were, you know, visiting those in prison and helping those who were sick, you know, you were actually helping me. And this is how he separates those who he says, you know, have done a good job from those who haven’t.
So there is this sense of the universal is very particular when it comes to the New Testament. And sometimes I think that when that gets twisted to it’s just me and Jesus sort of a religion, that’s obviously problematic. Hopefully... What we do with that is we recognize the personal nature of these questions of human salvation, of human flourishing, of the message either of the gospel or the message of the covenant of God with his people, that’s what that’s about. Okay. And that I think also leads to a call to witness in a way.
In the New Testament, one of the... I’ve trained you so well. That’s exactly what I was going to say. What’s that?
Ross Kenyon: I said, I’ve trained you so well. Please take it away. Oh, is that where we are supposed to go? Yeah. Let’s bring it back to witness. I was thinking why I have to bring it back.
Dr. Evan Kuehn: Yeah. It calls us to witness as well. In the New Testament, we have Stephen as one of the first martyrs of the Christian religion, and he witnessed to the work of God through the covenant. In the first epistle of John, it opens up and it says, That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, we’ve looked at, this is what we proclaim. That’s talking about witnessing, right? So whether we’re talking about sort of a covenant community as a whole religious body, a whole nation, or whether we’re talking about this one-on-one relationship, I think witnessing is always important because Religion deals with what the world doesn’t necessarily see with its own eyes.
And so there’s this call to bring the truth to the world, to bring this message of salvation and of liberation to people and make sure that it’s heard and seen by people. So it’s all tied in. I think it’s fine to make the dichotomies like you did, but also just recognize that, I mean, the Bible’s a whole library And we can pull together a lot of different ways of telling that story.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, thanks for complicating that. That’s a much better, more coherent way to... Well, you listen to the show, you know, whenever there’s two options like that, you know, it’s never that simple. You know, it’s your job to break it and nuance it, if I can make that a verb. But yeah, okay, so Witnesses. I’m trying to think of some good examples here. Obviously, you have the major minor prophets from the Old Testament. And then I can think of Christian martyrs. I’m sure maybe something like John Paul II with the Soviet Union and his work there would probably qualify.
Martin Luther King Jr. certainly would qualify. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Nazi Germany, that qualifies, right?
Dr. Evan Kuehn: I think that bringing up Nazi Germany, and I mentioned this earlier, the concept of the witness, and this goes beyond Christianity and really Judaism becomes sort of the faithful witnesses in this regard. Becomes an important moral figure of witnessing to the suffering. And that’s, of course, a deep biblical theme, too, right? That God does not overlook the suffering, that God has his eyes closed. And so, there is this sense of, you could be a witness of an MLK, you know, leading to social justice or John Paul II with...
It could also just be a witness of making clear to people that the suffering are also seen by God. And that’s why I think it’s become such an important theme for the Holocaust. So you look at, you know, another set of witnesses are people who were at the trial of Eichmann in Jerusalem. And a lot of the point of that moment was to make clear the humanity and the existence of those who were suffering under the Nazi regime. And that brings in as well, and it also has deeply religious roots to it.
Ross Kenyon: That’s good. I’m glad you went there too because I guess you could count Primo Levy and Hannah Arendt. I’m sure those certainly count as well. So I think we’ve defined this almost more by examples maybe than by the actual thing itself. But I think people probably have a good idea. Is it as simple as standing up for something you believe in when it’s really hard? That’s sort of maybe a kid’s way of putting it. But is that an okay working definition?
Dr. Evan Kuehn: Yeah, and what I would emphasize in that would be standing up means making known. You’re bearing some sort of message or you’re like a witness in a court trial. What you’re doing is telling what you have seen as a source of evidence that conveys something to some audience. Yeah. And sometimes that involves sacrifice. And that’s why actually the English word martyr comes from, it’s basically just a transliteration of the Greek word for witness. So it definitely often has to do with standing up in the face of some sort of adversity as well.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, that’s quite an interesting little linguistic thing you just shared. Okay, that makes sense then. Then how does this concept of witness leave the laboratory, perhaps, or leave a religious context of either, this is clearly a big part of Jewish and Christian religious tradition, but can it make that leap to being secular? Yeah.
Dr. Evan Kuehn: Yeah, and it can, I think, because any big human problem has some sort of religious sense to it, right? So, in this set of essays, we’re talking about climate change, and that’s our home that we’re talking about. That is creation. So I think that’s a thin place there between what’s sacred and what’s secular, right? And we see that in the civil rights movement as well. Martin Luther King Jr. is a prophet, not only because he was a preacher, but also because the fight for human rights and justice is one that’s always close to religious concerns.
So I think it makes that leap into the That’s why as much as it’s odd to talk about professionals witnessing, it makes perfect sense, I think, and there’s a naturalness to it.
Ross Kenyon: Maybe the most banal possible example, stating anything with any sort of conviction in a semi-prominent fashion online means people will write you very nasty notes forever, seemingly. So you’ve internalized the cost of that. And then that’s just the start of it.
Dr. Evan Kuehn: Well, in some of these, and I’m trying to remember, I don’t know if any of the writers for this journal experienced it personally, at least that they told, but when you do that as a professional, the nasty comments, you know, they say just don’t read the comments section and that’s good advice. But the comment section can lead to, you know, official complaints being registered and things like that with your employer. And so that’s where that risk also jumps from just being Internet chatter to something that might have real consequences.
And it’s why this is a risk and it’s why, you know, people hesitate to do it and don’t know exactly sort of the wise way to do it.
Ross Kenyon: Certainly true. I think I saw something about this in Naomi Oreski’s piece in here called, What is the Social Responsibility of Climate Scientists? About early in her career starting out and publishing some things that ended up getting her attention she didn’t necessarily want and genuinely feeling scared.
Dr. Evan Kuehn: That’s right. Yeah, yeah. Yes, she does mention that. Right. And I think talks about a colleague who did as well. Or even a few of them mentioned Jim Hansen, who brought climate change to the public eye in the mid 80s with congressional testimony, faced a lot of that from public outlash about it, sometimes from climate denialists, but just a beating to his reputation because he stepped out, right, and said something publicly. Right.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, there’s maybe the reaction was something like, hey, you’re a scientist. You should be writing papers and equations on chalkboards. Why are you out here telling us what to do? Was this something like that trying to go from the is to the ot that got them in trouble or what?
Dr. Evan Kuehn: Yeah, there’s that fact value distinction of, you know, scientists aren’t in the business of making normative claims, you shouldn’t do that. Or sometimes, you know, it’s, you know, this isn’t your area of expertise, right? And in a limited sense, I think those are good concerns to raise. That’s something that we should all be asking ourselves. Yeah, it’s a question of how are we going to Yeah. And, you know, you’ve got to have those conversations that cross boundaries if we’re going to have solutions to problems like this.
You’re going to have to fudge that is-ought distinction a little bit because ultimately you can’t fully separate them. Normative creatures who are always making decisions about how we live our life based on the facts of the matter and based on our knowledge and so we’re never going to be far away from people leaving the laboratory and talking publicly about well what does that mean what’s the significance of that for us.
Ross Kenyon: That question is so challenging, too, because I try to not have too many strong opinions or ones that I can’t justify. I try to weight my opinions and how strongly I want to hold to them based upon how much I know for the most part, or at least aspirationally. That’s the goal. But that also means, in many cases... I don’t speak up about things I probably should. The burden of proof for convincing me to take a position on something is high. And that means there are cases where I opt out of doing something that it would be good for me to do.
In many cases, people hold stronger opinions than they should. And it’s good for many of them to chill out on some of that stuff. But it comes with its own correlative risks too. And it’s not like I’m some model of how to live on that way either. Because I think I’m dropping the ball seriously.
Dr. Evan Kuehn: That’s a real risk. Yeah, I mean, climate change is actually kind of a good example of that, where when I engage with the literature on that, and I’m always, I was careful to say last time when I talked to you, and this time as well, I’m not a climate scientist. You know, when I read someone like Naomi Klein... Talking about the climate or there’s a book and I’m blanking on the author’s name, but it’s called We’re Doomed, Now What? And there are these very harsh understandings of the extremity of the situation.
And then there are others who talk in much more... More measured terms about the risks involved and about what we can do incrementally to work on climate change. And someone like me really needs to balance, well, you know, how severe is this situation and what level of responses to it are adequate or inadequate? And that’s a tough question to answer. And often the people who... Scare you the most can be the ones that motivate you to think about things in a certain way. So it’s a question of, like you said, setting a high bar of commitment to a certain belief.
And also I think being Being solutions oriented, recognizing that if we are going to listen to the experts talk about whatever problem we’re dealing with, who has something that’s actionable and that is realistic about the political and social and economic systems that are currently in place where we can actually get some traction and start doing something. It’s something that I struggle with as I read the literature as well. I think some comparable examples that we’re dealing with as a country now are the public health issue of the pandemic.
That’s a huge impact. Is, ought, fraught sort of problem, right? You know, we have the medicine on the one hand, but then we have the policy question of how do we make the best decisions given the medical knowledge that we have, given, you know, what the epidemiologists have told us, what do We do with that. And the other problem that comes to mind is issues of systemic racism. And how do we handle that? You know, we have experts both with, you know, police violence and data concerning that or mass violence.
Mass incarceration and also experts in issues of race. But it’s a huge question that can be different based on locality or region. It’s a question of policy and the implications of that population. And so all of this is inevitably going to be a mess without any very clear answer. And the answers are going to be different depending on what part of the problem we’re trying to tackle or what our immediate context is for dealing with that problem. Yeah, I just went off there on a tangent, I think.
Not a tangent, but a soapbox at least.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, no, that’s okay. It’s certainly welcome here. And similar to how I see it too, it’s a tough one to really figure out in a permanent kind of way. Well, so long as we’re talking religious things, I actually pulled up two verses that apply here that I think are really quite interesting. I read... And reading the Bible, by the way, is just the start because I feel like you have to read so much secondary material to even start to make sense of a lot of it.
I don’t even know that my understanding is even that good for literary or religious purposes or anything else. So I got this from a Rob Bell book on the Bible. It’s from Proverbs 26, 4 to 5. So you have these two Proverbs back to back. One says, do not answer a fool according to his folly or you yourself will be just like him. And then the next verse is, answer a fool according to his folly, or he will be wise in his own eyes. And so Rob Bell singles this out.
I think it’s an introduction to that book as a way of saying that one of the jobs the Bible ostensibly seeks to do is to teach you which of these to apply and know which of these proverbs to apply. That’s wisdom. And knowing when do you step in and when don’t you. It’s not like the Bible is just a simple rule book here. It’s supposed to actually make you think in this way because, I mean, they’re clearly contraposed here. Wouldn’t you agree?
Dr. Evan Kuehn: Yes. I mean, you can, there are plenty of places in the Bible that are books apart from each other and seem to contradict. But when you have, you know, just right here, verse by verse, it’s obvious that there’s a bigger lesson there that it’s trying to teach you, right? And I think that the... The appeal to wisdom and to context is important. It’s the distinction between knowledge and wisdom of you have sort of a deposit of knowledge that you can work with, but then how do you apply it and in what situation?
And the question of that situation is key. You brought up Bonhoeffer before. Situational ethics is something that gets a bad name because it seems to imply a sort of relativism about morals, you know, that we don’t have these absolute moral principles. Bonhoeffer in a way was a big advocate in his ethical writings of something like a situational ethics in the sense that we need to be attentive to our moral duties in the situation that God has placed us in. Yeah, and sometimes that means you answer the fool and sometimes that means you don’t, right?
Hopefully it doesn’t mean that you are the fool too often. But if you are, hopefully it means you’re a good listener when someone does answer you.
Ross Kenyon: You should tell just the quick version of Bonhoeffer’s story because his change in tactics and approach, I think it all falls under the category of witness. But yeah, his situational ethics, I guess you could pose it that way, certainly did evolve.
Dr. Evan Kuehn: Yeah, and oh, I’m hesitant as soon as you ask me that. This is the problem actually speaking of witnessing professionals. Academics sometimes get very squeamish about getting out of their small area of expertise because I can think of three or four Bonhoeffer scholars that I hope won’t listen to this podcast.
Ross Kenyon: He was like a pacifist who opposed the Nazis and then ended up involved in a plot to kill Hitler. Right. Yeah.
Dr. Evan Kuehn: Right. And ended up martyred in the end was actually not I mean, he’s known as a pacifist, but was relatively conservative politically through much of his life. And, you know, people look at to Bonhoeffer. He was a radical sort of figure. And in some ways he was in the sense that he was responding to a situation, well, in two really conflicting radical ways, right? Through involvement in an assassination plot, but then also through a path of real commitment to nonviolence. But in lots of ways he wasn’t radical.
He was just kind of an ordinary bourgeois sort of Christian. But... Was a witness when the time came and learned and grew through the situation?
Ross Kenyon: Well, that’s one way to put it versus some sort of sustained political career. This is such a horrible analogy, but he’s the Han Solo, right? He’s doing his own thing and then swoops in with the Millennium Falcon and saves Luke before the photon torpedoes. This is so dumb. I guess I was waiting like, where is he going? Yeah, sorry, sorry. That’s something that Dan Carlin would say in Hardcore History. Yeah, Dietrich Bonhoeffer is like the Han Solo character. The Han Solo, yeah.
Okay. Anyways, so back on track. Not everyone is called to do something nearly so extreme. And in fact, this other essay I know that you really liked a lot was from Robert Sokolow called Witnessing for the Middle to Depolarize the Climate Change Conversation. Maybe this can give us a way out of this for normal people.
Dr. Evan Kuehn: Yeah, and I like this and in some ways it reminded me and I think I told you this, it kind of reminded me of the work of Nori because you all are very solutions oriented. You’re not out there for some ideological fight. Right. Right. And some people are with the climate crisis. And for good reason, because it’s a serious problem and it has huge global implications. But Sokolov and he’s so he’s like a He’s a professor emeritus of engineering and ran for a while Princeton’s carbon mitigation initiative.
And he talks about in his essay, he talks about middle building or witnessing to the middle. And he talks about that in contrast to... So, you know, when you read that, it might come across to some people as a way of dodging responsibility of sort of, Shooting for that third way, like, let’s make everyone happy, let’s just be centrist about this. But that’s not what he’s doing, really. You know, when he’s talking about witnessing to the middle, he’s recognizing that the major problem that we’re dealing with stands above the polarizations that make it difficult to find a way through, right?
That make it difficult to find something that we can actually take action on and find a solution there. And so he proposed it and he goes through the essay. He lists like half a dozen ways to move forward. And one of them is carbon capture, right? And he offers these as solutions, none of which are going to solve everything. None, you We don’t have any silver bullets here, but they are ways to talk into the middle of the problem rather than to take sides in a particular poll where usually when we do that, our focus is more on the opposition, right, than it is on the crisis at hand.
So I think it was a really great essay in the climate mitigation initiative that he is a part of. They talk a lot about stabilization wedges. So if you picture a stabilization wedge, what he’s talking about there, if you picture... So one of them might be, You know, what Nori’s doing with agriculture to capture carbon through, you know, working with farmers. That’s not going to solve climate change, but it’s going to be one wedge that you can take out of So that was a great essay.
Just to bring us down to earth in a way, I think, and talk about the fact that we Witnessing does not need to be radical in the sense of, you know, you are going to as extreme a position as possible to witness to this particular event. Witnessing is often about finding middle ground, finding ways to work with people who have adamant disagreements about basic aspects of the problem. But how can we find a solution amidst that disagreement?
Ross Kenyon: I think that’s a very valuable distinction because I think if you’ll allow the synonym of activist for witness here, I think most people think that being an activist means being loud and extreme and I don’t know. I think that’s a very valuable type of activism. You’re just not out there in the black block throwing Molotov cocktails necessarily either.
Dr. Evan Kuehn: Exactly. Right. One of the essays also, I don’t, I can’t recall that the author offhand was talking about working on climate change solutions with businesses and with CEOs and brought up that they have... Priorities related to the bottom line. And that can either make them an enemy that we don’t work with toward climate solutions, or you can start talking about what are their goals and values and what are our goals and values And how can we work together to come up with a solution there? That’s witnessing to an audience in a way that’s very different from yelling at the top of your lungs or from having kind of a my way or the highway approach to the problem.
And this is where I think, you know, people like Naomi Klein, who I, you know, I think her work’s really important where she highlights the basic kind of But until everyone’s on board with a sort of socialist future, how far does that get us to approach the process? And so I think that’s the important part of middle building here is you can be a witness. And unfortunately, we’re not all going to agree about what the world should look like in the coming decades. So we’ve got to find something to talk about, you know, in the absence of that.
Ross Kenyon: Another example of this that I’ve tried to do on my end is I’ve had friends who, some of who went kind of off the deep end into Trump world or adjacent areas. And a lot of my friends sort of, you know, here, I’ll go King James on you, cast them into outer darkness. And I didn’t want to do that because then I thought if they... If they didn’t have anyone around who was, you know, less extreme, then all they would have was people who agreed with them and reinforced these ideas.
So without trying to argue with them really severely or call them, you know, horrible names, which, you know, you could argue that in some cases may actually deserve. I was just trying to be like a normalizing individual. I don’t even know. I don’t know that it worked. I don’t know that. But I don’t have a counterfactual available to me because that’s not how time moves. But I like to think that alternatively, people argue that will actually by failing to punish them by no longer being their friend, you are enabling and validating their behavior.
So I don’t really know if I did the right thing or not.
Dr. Evan Kuehn: Yeah, and it’s a tough problem. I think it’s one of those, you know, back to just sort of the situational nature of how we should be wise in any particular situation. It really depends on the person and the relationship. But I think what you point out there is important because we have a tendency to... Think of people that we can’t, when we can’t rationalize why they’re making the decisions they’re making or why they have the beliefs they do, it’s very easy to think of them as monsters or villains or, you know, like you said, kind of, you know, put them in the outer darkness there.
But in reality, most of us are much more mundane than that. I have found actually, I think, you know, in this age when we’re talking about like a post-truth era, I feel like that’s even like... The early Trump era, people don’t even talk about that anymore. But this idea of like going off the deep end with various conspiracies, it’s often because we’re dealing with very complex problems that we don’t understand how to process as. And so we start to get skeptical of authorities and experts. And a lot of it, I think, is very fear-based.
And that’s not the sort of person you want to cast out. That’s the sort of person that is dealing with a world that’s much bigger than they are. And they’re trying to make sense of it just like you or I or anyone else is. And I think that... At least when I have been in these situations, the key isn’t to solve the problem by leading them to the light. The key is to maintain those social bonds because that’s how we interact with each other. We have to keep those ties together as much as possible.
Sometimes it’s And that’s not a good reason, I think, to cut ties.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I’m not entirely sure how one handles it. Maybe we can just default back to this Proverbs discussion about wisdom. Yeah. Because I think there’s truth in both of those too, right? Like if you lost all of your friends because you said some... A horrible anti-Semitic thing on your Facebook page, then many people would say like, hey, that’s feedback that no one agrees with you and thinks that’s quite foolish. But who knows? Maybe they take solace by diving deeper into that world. Which of those actually happens?
I don’t know. Yeah. Who knows? This stuff’s pretty hard here. Well, it doesn’t sound like you have an answer for me, but I think maybe I don’t. Sorry. Is that what you were expecting? Yeah, yeah. I was thinking that you could solve ethics for me really discreetly here. Yeah. I don’t know. I have more faith too in just being a normal presence though and trying to do that. And I have friends too like I have some friends who are straight up communists.
I don’t want that world really. Like a lot of the stuff they say, some of it I’m like, ooh, a lot of these guillotine memes, pretty uncomfortable, man. I don’t know that I want to live in that world. So I think I also try to do that by being around people where maybe some people just being around being like, yeah, it’s a little much for me as opposed to the rest of the friends who are like, yeah, you cut Jeff Bezos' head off. Like, you know,
Dr. Evan Kuehn: yeah, yeah. Well, it’s a reaction to the fact that I always go back to like it’s... The kernel of this is like these are massive problems that we’re dealing with. I mean, you and I’m sure you found a way to cope to a certain extent with the massive problem of climate change because you work with it every day. But yeah, whether it’s, you know, Jeff Bezos and this sort of the plutocracy that holds so many people in sort of a position of complete sort of lack of freedom, you know.
These are legitimately big problems. And the question is, how do you fix a Jeff Bezos, right? When you have no control over that situation, how do you fix a rapidly warming world climate? When the problems get so big that there don’t seem to be any really viable responses to them, then, of course, people are going to pull out the guillotine and start talking in those terms. And so then maybe I feel like, and this goes back to Soklo’s talk of middle building here. That’s where, you know, maybe the basis of interaction is to introduce these sorts of incremental responses to it.
So the question is... If it’s not correct to witness to the situation by talking about a guillotine, then what would be a proper way to witness to it? And then you can start talking about local solutions. You know, in the face of the Jeff Bezos of the world, what are some local cooperative efforts that I can work with to make the world a different place? What are some ways that I can be wiser about this problem? And, you know, try to introduce solutions that are short of violent revolution, right?
That’s what we want to avoid if possible here. Yeah, you don’t want to watch a live version of Les Miserables? Yes. And the reason why people are, you know, jumping to that is it sounds so inadequate to just talk about local and incremental, right? But that’s all we’ve got. And that’s all you and I have the support. And so we need to be wise about the situation that we live in and work from there rather than pretend that things are different or pretend that, yeah, just that we have sort of the agency to do more than that.
It’s important, I think, to recognize our smallness and that we’re just one piece of a much larger picture.
Ross Kenyon: People have often written asking what they can do. And I feel like I never really have that compelling of an answer because I’m not always sure what actually is efficacious, what actually might be surprisingly harmful. So I try to be really modest in what I advise because I don’t know in many cases. But at least if we constrain that to being a witness, how might someone be a constructive witness? Is it what you described of talking to people who... Maybe are persuadable, but not quite on board for thinking climate change is a serious problem.
Something else?
Dr. Evan Kuehn: I think it can be. I was thinking about this question, too. I kind of figured this is where the conversation would head. And I think it can be just talking to people often. And social media is kind of the classic. That doesn’t count as talking to people, by the way, Evan. Well, right. Exactly. That can I was going to say, like, that’s where people go to, like, you know, share their whether it’s like I’m pissed at Trump because of X, Y or Z or or, you know, about like climate change is real.
It can easily be a soapbox. Right. Or a. Just a an echo chamber and you’re not really engaging with people. It’s not always like that. I’ve had lots of really great deep conversations with people one on one, whether it’s social media or elsewhere. These days with everyone, you know, in the pandemic, it might be more social media than normal because we just can’t see friends face to face. But I think another way to witness is to slow down and to learn more about the systems that we’re a part of.
When I was thinking about this, a lot of these essays, as much as they’re talking about going out and being sort of activist scholars in the public sphere, It involved a lot of deep reflection of how is my work wrapped up into a wider system, into other disciplines of work. And I think that’s where we get the best answer of how works. So I teach them research methods. I teach them about data. I teach them what scientific literature is and how to deal with it. So my, you know, place in the system has a lot to do with sort of that initial point of access to a lot of these systems.
Scientific, the research and the scientific literature. So what witnessing might look like for me is introducing some of these interesting problems to students and giving them the tools to work with it, right? Or when What this thing might look like to me is, you know, I’m on a university campus. There’s been a lot of talk of like divesting from fossil fuel interests on university campuses. So I think a lot of academics look at the system they’re a part of and they ask, where’s the money going and how is that affecting the problem?
That might be another aspect of it. And it’s just a matter of figuring out what your context is and then figuring out who your audience is and then what the most appropriate form of witnessing is in that place. There’s always our relationship. So I think that one-on-one conversation you’re talking about is always important. But then it’s also figuring out where we are and what our place in the world is. And from there, we can get a better sense of, you know, it’s not my job.
To talk with farmers and to get them on board with Nori’s plan. That’s probably not going to be something that I’m ever going to work with. But I played a different piece in the puzzle, you know, and I can contribute in that sense. So I think everyone kind of has to look at where they fall, where they’re placed and then ask the question from there.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, and the only rule I think we might be able to add on top of that is make sure the methods you’re choosing to witness are not self-serving. So I’m sure it’d be really fun to dunk on your uncle at a holiday meal, which may never happen ever again at this point, and just put him in his place and shut him down. But is everyone yelling, unlikely to change anyone’s mind? Was that actually for you or was it for the benefit of I think in some cases, it’s certainly the former.
Dr. Evan Kuehn: Sort of sneaking, yeah, self-serving aspect of it. Are you a witness or are you a grandstander of some sort? Is this more about proving that you are right about something and winning an argument or is it about what should ultimately be the role of the witness? Talking to other people about what you have seen and what you have heard and opening up that truth to be available to other people, right?
Ross Kenyon: Yeah. Okay. And let me know, since you’re the one with the serious theology chops here, but I think—so correct me if I’m wrong— Being a witness is not always glamorous. The example that came to mind for me is Hosea, who as one of the minor prophets is talking about how his wife is cheating on him all the time. And that’s kind of like how Israel is with God, right? Israel keeps straying away from God, just like my cheating wife. And that’s sort of a humiliating story to tell.
I especially think it would have been humiliating in the Bronze Age. So it isn’t just being a glamorous freedom fighter, Bansky’s not going to make a mural out of you kind of thing. There’s no Hosea by Bansky.
Dr. Evan Kuehn: That doesn’t exist, right? Yeah. Or like Ezekiel is asked to do some really bizarre things, to stand as a sign. Yeah. And so sometimes it can just be a prophet is not something that often you want to wake up in the morning and be called to do, right? Yeah.
Ross Kenyon: No, you get swallowed by whales. You got to go to Nineveh. It’s a whole to-do. Yeah. No, it doesn’t seem like a life many people would choose freely. It seems difficult and it isn’t just glamour. I don’t know. I guess what would they look like now? I’m trying to think. This is probably too far afield. The Witnesses? Yeah, I’m just trying to think, like, because, yeah, as he goes up there talking about aliens and then the emissions of donkeys and stuff like that, and it’s sort of, it’s a, that book’s a, you know, a little bit strange.
But most of them are pretty, they don’t seem to be of the higher respected classes overall. Most of the prophets, well, I don’t actually know, are they mostly commoners?
Dr. Evan Kuehn: Oh man, that’s a good question. I actually don’t know the answer to that question, where they’re called from. Certainly, I mean, certainly God calls the lowly in lots of cases. There are a few cases where, you know, priests sort of serve in the role of prophets. But yeah, but then they’re also speaking to those in power and speaking against those in power as well. So there’s that distance between them.
Ross Kenyon: I was going to say too, one thing I really like about Jewish scripture is Saul, David, and Solomon are all kind of schmucks in their own way. But David especially, I love his dancing at the banquet and flashing the entire nation. And then him still being a hero is so funny because the portrait that’s painted of him is sort of warts and all and just sort of like kind of a goofball and like they make mistakes and they’re not hagiographies. And I expected them to be Much more noble, but it seems like Saul makes some pretty big mistakes.
They all sort of do. They’re not just like one-sided.
Dr. Evan Kuehn: Yeah, they all do. They all make mistakes and that goes back to the idea you were talking about sort of the... The danger of the self-serving nature of the witness, I think. The Bible is a good text to go to recognize in a very humbling way sort of the shortcomings of humanity. And it isn’t about these great figures standing on high sort of telling us the truth. Often we learn the truth from these prophets and kings from the mistakes that they make, right? We learn it from their failures.
So yeah, there’s a real humanizing element to it, right?
Ross Kenyon: I think so. Relatedly too, sorry, this is also going to be like the bonus addendum section here, but I saw a Jonathan Haidt lecture at a temple here, maybe it was a synagogue, I can’t remember, here in Seattle last year, two years ago. And it was a version of his Righteous Mind lecture, but it specifically dealt with Jewish criticism and how Judaism as a religion and the Jewish people in general have these traditions. You can think about it as something like the Talmud and Talmudic scholarship, but just, you know, centuries of, you know, very learned religious Jews sort of like Arguing out these esoteric points and that being like a big cultural point.
And the point he was trying to make was that Jews have a cultural tradition of solving problems by talking and working through things and having this dialogue. And he thought that they could serve a leadership role in trying to depolarize an increasingly polarized society. And I don’t know that this fits into this episode so neatly, but I thought that was a really fascinating cultural insight.
Dr. Evan Kuehn: I think it’s a great point. Actually, in my own work with theology, I co-authored a book, it was last year, it was just before we talked the first time, I think, called Theology Compromised. And it’s about this approach to faith as a matter of compromise, of I think it fits with the witness. We do live as a human community that is gifted with various things like, you know, rationality and expertise and emotions so that we can work out what is good. And what constitutes human flourishing together, right?
So I think it ties in perfectly. It’s a matter of compromise and of coming together in conversation that is going to be the solution to these problems and also how we witness to the good life and the community that God calls us to.
Ross Kenyon: Well, you put a nice little bow on it, Evan. Is there anything you might like to direct people to in order to keep up with what you’re thinking about reading, all that?
Dr. Evan Kuehn: You know, I’d say, first of all, the journal issue has a few of them for free, and you should link that for your viewers. Naomi Oreskes, I went and read hers and Robert J. Lifton’s books, so her Her book is Merchants of Doubt. And she talks about scientists involved with actually climate denial. And Robert Lipton, The Climate Swerve, talks about basically what he does in this journal of like public action about climate change. So those were great to go back and read sort of. Great.
Links to all of those things are in the show notes as well as your Twitter, your website, stuff like that. Thank you for coming back on the show, Evan. Thank you. It’s great to be here again. Thanks for having me.
Ross Kenyon: That’s great. I’m happy to do so. And if you like the show, if you like meandering conversations about theology and climate change and other topics, please give us a great rating and review on the Apple Podcast app. If you open up the podcast app on your iPhone right now, give us five stars, assuming you believe that we deserve it. Write us a great review. It helps us get this content out to more people. And thank you so much for listening.
