In 1942, Karl Barth was asked to write to Christians in the United States. He didn't know the American context well, so he asked his hosts to send him the questions they were actually wrestling with. James Spencer and Ashish Varma work through the first of them: how can a Christian be a loyal citizen of a national state and a loyal member of a church that transcends national interests? Barth's answer turns on a distinction between the national state and what he calls the righteous state — the God-instituted order the church prays toward when it prays for God's will on earth. James and Ashish trace what that means in practice: that a state serving only its own interests forfeits any claim to righteousness, that the church is not identical with the kingdom it hopes for, and that protest and resistance are forms of loyalty rather than betrayals of it. The conversation sets Barth against the German Christian church of his day, the Augustinian figure of the pilgrim, Jeremiah's shock that God would use Babylon, and the question of what any of it means at a ballot box. First of a series on the letter. Chapters (approximate, from speaker turns — verify against the final cut): 00:00 The backstory: why Barth wrote this letter 02:19 Question one: loyal citizen, loyal to the church universal 03:25 Is the nation state a recent invention? 04:55 The righteous state and the kingdom of God 08:13 The church hopes for the kingdom but isn't identical with it 13:31 Volk, blood, and the purity of the land 19:32 Reading Barth: resist everything incompatible 24:37 Why resistance is loyalty, not betrayal 26:26 The state that serves only itself ceases to be righteous 28:16 Empire, India, and the limits of the good-guy story 34:07 No white hats and black hats 39:26 "Righteous" in scare quotes 41:45 "We shall have our hands full" 43:57 Jeremiah, Babylon, and God using pagan nations 47:18 Augustine's pilgrim: belonging to a place without being owned by it 51:37 Narrowing, and what the church broadens 54:49 Single-issue voting and playing by the world's rules Tags/keywords: Karl Barth, Letter to American Christians, Barth 1942, Christian nationalism, church and state, kingdom of God, German Christian church, Confessing Church, Bonhoeffer, Augustine pilgrim, political theology, Christian citizenship, single-issue voting, Christians and politics Follow and subscribe Subscribe to Thinking Christian: https://episodes.thinkingchristian.org Website: www.thinkingchristian.org Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.
