Theology in the Raw - A Sri Lankan Christian Perspective on American Foreign Policy: Dr. Vinoth Ramachandra

Episode Date: September 26, 2024

Vinoth Ramachandra from Colombo, Sri Lanka, He holds both bachelors and doctoral degrees in nuclear engineering from the University of London. He is an international lecturer and writer. Vinoth has also been involved with the Civil Rights Movement in Sri Lanka, as well as with the global Micah Network (a network of development and justice organizations) and A Rocha (a world-wide biodiversity conservation organization). He is the author of several essays, articles and books including Gods That Fail (2nd ed. 2016), Subverting Global Myths: Theology and the Public Issues that Shape Our World (2008) and Sarah’s Laughter: Doubt, Tears and Christian Hope (Langham, 2020) Register for the Exiles 2 day conference in Denver (Oct 4-5) here: https://theologyintheraw.com/exiles-denver/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey friends, welcome back to another episode of theology in the raw, the exiles and Babylon conference. Den Denver, Colorado is right around the corner. October 4th to 5th. You can go to theology and the rod.com. Check out all the info. Make sure you register, uh, as soon as possible. If you're wanting to attend, you can attend live or you can attend virtually. My guest today is Dr. Vinod Ramachandra, who is from Colombo, Sri Lanka. He holds a bachelor and doctoral degree in nuclear engineering from University of London. He's an international lecturer and writer, he's also been involved with the civil rights movement

in Sri Lanka, as well as with the Global Micah Network and a ROCA, a worldwide biodiversity conservation organization. He's the author of several essays and books, books, including a book that I came across years ago called subverting global myths, theology and the, and the public issues that shape our world. A really fantastic book. I've followed his name and his work for a while and reached out to him. There's obviously a massive time difference between Boise, Idaho and Sri Lanka. So I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to get him on the podcast,

but he agreed to come on the show and talk, talk with us. I wanted to ask him the question because he is very involved with very knowledgeable of just kind of world events, world affairs, American politics, and especially from a, you know, his perspective as a, as his perspective as a solid Christian in Sri Lanka, looking at the impact that America has globally from an outside perspective. I wanted to ask him this question. What is your perspective on American foreign policy as it affects the global church? I know it's a very general question. And I kind of wanted him to take it in whatever direction he wanted. But I just really, I mean, this conversation goes in many different directions. We talk about politics, we talk about American foreign

policy, we talk about political discipleship and other related things. And yeah, it's just, I'm really, really excited that Dr. Ramachandra decided to come on the show. So please welcome to the show for the first time. He won an only Dr. Vinod Ramachandra. I am so excited about this conversation. Um, I, I was just telling Dr. Ramachanda offline that one of his early books,

Subverting Global Miss is a book that I assigned in when I was a college professor and I just found it incredibly helpful. And this is, when did you write that? That was, I want to say 15, almost 15, 18 years ago? Or? It was published in 2008. 2008, okay.

So it's been a while over 15 years. Just tell us quickly your story. Where you from? How did you become a Christian? And how did you decide to get into Christian academia? Well, I was born and brought up in Sri Lanka, which is where I am now. But I had my university education in London, England. I became a Christian in my late teens, sort of just before my 18th birthday. I explicitly remember receiving Christ as Lord and asking my local parish priest in the Anglican church whether I could be confirmed. So, and then I went to university in England and that's where I met Christians my own age. I didn't know any Christians my own age, really committed Christians until I went to university.

When I finished my university education, I wanted to have a sort of an academic career in the West. I'd studied nuclear engineering. Didn't want to go back to Sri Lanka. But I had received so much as a student through a university Christian ministry. And so I decided I would take a year off and just go back to Sri Lanka because I'd heard that there was a group of college students who were wanting help in starting a national Christian student movement.

So I said, okay, I'll spend a year with you and help you. And I just traveled around the island when I saw what was happening in the country and in the churches, I thought, well, how can I go back to Britain or America? There's so much need here and so few committed Christians, particularly having gifts of speaking, of Bible teaching. And so I decided I would stay and do that work full-time for a few years. But those few years ended up as more than 40 years, which is where I am now. So all my writing came out of my involvement with Christian and non-Christian university students, first in Sri Lanka and then more widely in other parts of the world.

What's the state of Christianity in Sri Lanka? Is it a very small percentage that are Christians? Is it persecuted? Are you persecuted? Yes, well, we have, the total population is 22 million, of which 7% are Roman Catholic. And that's largely because we were a Portuguese colony in the 16th century. And there were fishing villages on the coast

that were mass baptized by the Portuguese. Protestants number just only 1%, less than 1% of the population. Is Christianity looked down upon? Is it an accepted religion, broadly speaking, in Sri Lanka? Yes. I mean, yes. But the people would still try to identify Christianity with Western colonialism, with Portuguese and later British, and still think of it as a Western religion. That's a way, yeah, they try to depict Christianity or criticize Christianity, but there's no state persecution of Christians, although from time to time, especially in the rural areas, if there are Buddhists who become Christians, sometimes their families or the local

Buddhist monk might instigate a mob to do an attack at Christian church. That's sporadic. It's not organized on a state level. Well, I wanted to talk to you on the podcast with a really kind of, I guess, a specific question that could be very open-ended. So I'm happy for you to address it however you want. As my listeners know, the all-general is very much unplanned. I like to see where the conversation goes. But the starting point I'd like to toss out is I would love your perspective on the impact that American foreign policy has on global Christianity. I know that this is kind of a broad question,

but I guess my underlying motivation here is that we Christians in America, it's easy for us to be very, very patriotic, you know, and like anybody's going to love their country for the most part. But sometimes I think we can be overly, maybe, maybe think too well of, of American foreign policy or think that we are the good guys. There's a lot of bad guys out there. So whatever we're doing is probably producing good in the world. And yet in reading your work, I mean, you, as somebody who's not in America, and yet is very much a committed believer, gives sometimes a different angle. So yeah, go back to my original question. How, what would you like to say to American Christians about the

impact that American foreign policy has on the global church? Yes, well, it's very interesting for us to see the whole, what's called the Christian nationalism movement in America, as a kind of mirror image of the Buddhist nationalism that we experience in Sri Lanka, or the Hindu nationalism that's there in India, or the Muslim or Islamist nationalism in some parts of the Islamic world. Because basically the claim by these groups of people is that the country really belongs to us. In the American case,

that America is founded as a Christian nation. And so we face threats from people who are not Christians who are in positions of political power. And so we must recapture power and these others should regard themselves as our guests, thereby our sufferings. But we are the rightful owners of this country and that leads to violence in Sri Lanka. It's Buddhists who exercise violence against minority Hindus, Christians, and Muslims. And in America, there is this great bogey

of a secular threat by atheists or Muslims or whatever who are trying to take over the country. So it's trying to use the government to serve our narrow religious ends. It's a mirror image. And I wish Christians in America could see that. That just as they might protest what militant Buddhists are doing in Sri Lanka or militant Hindus in India, they're doing the same in America.

So that's the first thing I would want to say. The second thing is that as Christians they should think of themselves primarily as Christians and not as Americans. Just as Sri Lankan Christians should think of themselves primarily as Christians and not as members of their particular ethnic group or their nation-state. Because to put the nation-state in the place of Christ is idolatry. And we should be willing to critique what our nation state is doing vis-à-vis other nation states in the name of Christ and his kingdom and the values of his kingdom.

Now that's what we try to do here in Sri Lanka as a Christian minority. And so when our governments turn around and say, well, Christians are doing the same thing in America, why are you protesting? They talk about human rights, but the only rights that they talk about are the rights of American fetuses. They deny the rights of people who are not Americans by bombing them, killing them. They don't care about babies in Gaza or on the West Bank. So all this talk of human rights, all this talk of being a Christian nation is just hypocritical. It's very hard

then for us to hold our governments accountable for their abuses of people, their violations of human rights, when the West simply uses human rights talk in a hypocritical and one-sided way. So that's why I often think that the American Empire is the biggest threat to global peace because of its hypocrisy. You know, the Russians, the Chinese, the North Koreans, the Iranians, they don't believe in human rights. They don't believe in international law and they say so explicitly. But America and the United Kingdom, which is America's lapdog, always following what the Americans do, they talk a lot about human rights, about democracy, but in practice, they are the biggest supporters of the most brutal regimes around the world. So America,

for example, is responsible for more than 40% of all the arms sales in the world. And a lot of those arms are going to regimes that are using those arms against their own people. Like in Israel, like in Saudi Arabia, those are the two biggest buyers of American arms. So as many observers have said, American foreign policy is largely controlled by the American weapons industry by what was called in the 1960s the military industrial complex in America. The giant weapons manufacturing companies they shape and control a lot of American foreign policy. So even as you know Biden and Blinken are deceiving us by talking about you know how they are pressing Israel to a ceasefire in Gaza, at the same time just last week they

announced a fresh shipment of 20 billion US dollars worth of arms to Israel. 20 billion US dollars is five times the foreign exchange reserves of Sri Lanka, the country which I'm in. Going to a regime that the ICC chief prosecutor has said is responsible for war crimes, you know, wanted for genocide. So that is why there's a lot of cynicism towards Christianity in the non-Western world by thoughtful non-Christians who see these nations and the large numbers of Christians in these nations allowing their tax monies to be used by their government to support or promote genocide or ethnic cleansing. That's the way that American Christians are actually betraying the gospel and betraying their brothers and sisters in other parts of the world.

Do you find it hard? I appreciate that. We, I've actually, um, had several, uh, Christian Palestinians on the show over the last eight months, really. Um, to say a lot, a lot of what you're talking about. Do you find it hard because Christianity is so associated with the West, with America, that when people hear you're a Christian in Sri Lanka, do they automatically connect you with like, oh, so they see you as like a sellout to the Americans or something like that, or do they see you as connected with the American empire

that you were talking about? Like, do you find it hard to separate your Christian identity from a Western kind of connection? Well, yes, we have to always explain to people. That's largely they do it out of ignorance. They don't realize that two thirds of the world's Christians live in the non-Western world. That simple fact they don't know.

But they also use this as a political tool because of the history. And also because there is so much American money that goes into so-called mission programs in the world and we are bombarded by American evangelical television channels, some of the mega churches in America broadcast all over the world, the governments do a block it, some do in some Muslim countries. So we have Christians in our churches who are exposed to that kind of theology with its nationalist, American white nationalist theologies, Christian Zionist theologies, prosperity theologies coming from these American mega churches or television channels. So when a Buddhist or a Hindu or a Muslim listens to that, they identify even local Christianity

with American evangelical Christianity because of its global influence and it's largely driven by money. So even though American Christians are a tiny minority within the global church, because of the way that they use money to promote, to broadcast their particular mission agendas, their particular theologies, they have a disproportionate influence in other parts of the global church. You mentioned my book, I've never had a marketing agent,

I don't have a PR agent, I have to promote and sell my own books. But some of these megachurch evangelists and pastors, they have teams of people to promote their particular theologies. And a lot of those theologies are just so unbiblical, even heretical. I think Christian Zionism is a case in point. I want to try to represent, so you've brought up Israel and Palestine. I want to try and represent the perspective of many American Christians, and I would love for you to respond. The perspective we're often told is, you know, you have a lot of radical Islam countries, regimes in the Middle East, a lot of terrorism, and Israel is the one democracy that is not

that. And the United States needs to have an ally that is a democracy that is for human rights, that is a beacon of light in a very dark place in the world. And so for the US to have a positive influence on the world, we need to have allies that are also for democracy, and Israel happens to be one of those allies. So to keep terrorism at bay, we kind of need to align with Israel. How would you, first of all, does that sound about right? I mean, I'm sure you've heard this perspective,

and how would you- Well, I've heard that. Yes,? I mean, I'm sure you've heard this perspective. And how would you? I've heard that. Yes, certainly I've heard that. And it's because a lot of those people who speak like this are just ignorant of Middle Eastern history, as well as what has been happening in the Middle East, say even in just in the last 10 years. I mean, since 2018, when Benjamin Netanyahu rewrote the constitution of Israel, they

openly declare themselves to be a Jewish state, not a democracy. Twenty percent of Israelis who have Israeli passports are Arabs, and they are therefore second-class citizens within Israel. So you can have a democracy or you can have a Jewish state. It's like having a Christian state or an Islamic state. So those who are not Christians, who are not Muslims are then second-class citizens. So I have friends who are Arab Christians within Israel, they're not Palestinians, leave aside the Palestinians, these are Israeli Arab Christians, 20% of the population within Israel, who are not treated as equals. And there are also many Jews within Israel who are opposed

to Netanyahu and his murderous policies for the last 25 years of the stewards of Palestinians and who are speaking up for the rights of Palestinians. And even within America, if you look at all the protests that are taking place in America, there are many young Jews who are opposed to the Zionist project, which is to make, you know, include Gaza and the West Bank within the state of Israel and push every Palestinian, every Arab out there. They're opposed to that. They have been for many, many years. So the irony is that it is Christians largely who speak in the language that you have just spoken, whereas there are many Jews both within Israel and living outside Israel in America who see Israel as a despotic tyranny, far worse than many Arab states.

There are democracies in the Arab world, and if there are dictatorships like in Egypt or in Saudi Arabia, they are allies of the US. One of the highest values I have in life is living in, learning from, and experiencing other cultures. There's no better way to think globally, and every Christian should think globally, than to actually experience the globe. This is why you need to check out the English Language Institute in China, or it's called ELIC. Okay, so ELIC is an organization that specializes in helping people fulfill their calling to live with purpose overseas. Through partnerships with the government and educational institutions in the hardest to access countries in the world, ELIC places teachers on campuses where you have the opportunity to build authentic friendships with

students, colleagues, and with neighbors. They've been doing this for more than 40 years and more than a dozen countries, not just China, all throughout Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa with programs ranging from two to four weeks, to nine months, to even more than a year. I didn't even know this at the time, but I actually had a former ELIC teacher, Dr. Brad Vaughn, as a guest on the podcast back in June, 2023.

It's episode 1083, if you want to check it out, you'll hear more. So if you want to explore a very meaningful overseas experience, then go to elic.org forward slash TITR. So they even created a special landing page for our listeners. Again, that's ELIC.org forward slash TITR. Check it out. You mentioned Saudi Arabia.

This is something I don't think a lot of Americans know the relationship between America and Saudi Arabia. There's just a lot of stuff going on that I think we're just not aware of. If you're knowledgeable of this relationship. It's very interesting. Remember when Trump became president, the first foreign trip that Trump made after he became president was not to Britain or to Europe, it was to Saudi Arabia. And it could be because of all his business dealings in Saudi Arabia and the Arab States, but also because, like I said, next to Israel, Saudi Arabia is the biggest buyer of American arms and Saudi Arabia is a patriarchal monarchy. So America sees Iran as its biggest threat in the Middle East, where Saudi Arabia

and Egypt are as tyrannical as the Iranian regime. And one reason why Netanyahu and the, you know, his allies have been trying to, yeah, target, like they targeted the Hamas political leader in Iran, is Netanyahu's strategy is to get America to come to its aid to fight Iran. That's his long term strategy. That has always been his strategy. So it's not an Arab threat. The Iranians are not Arabs. The Iranians represent a different brand of it. They have a different history to the Arab nations. But America and Israel see Iran as as their biggest threat and are trying to drag Iran into this conflict with the Palestinians. Israel can't do it on their own. They need American military help and the Americans will foot the bill as they always do. So that's the strategy.

So this talk of Israel being a democracy and all the Arabs, you know, being anti-democratic is a lie. And we must also distinguish between some of those Arab regimes. I mentioned Saudi Arabia and I mentioned Egypt. Distinguish between the regimes that are in power and the Arab peoples. And the Arab peoples are frustrated with some of their own regimes and they're not receiving any help from the West to actually establish rights, respecting democracies in their country. So America, so is it dependent upon Saudi Arabia

for lots of money? They're buying tons of weapons, so they're feeding money into our weapons manufacturers, is that correct? Yes. Saudi money, Saudi oil, this has always been the case. Well, it's very interesting that until the 1960s, the American government was not unilaterally pro-Israel. They consistently argued for the rights of the Palestinian people for a two-state solution. It was the British, historically, who are responsible for the creation of Israel and the expulsion of the Arab population. But it's after 1967 when Israel then forcibly seized what today we call Gaza, the Golan Heights, East Jerusalem. It's from 67 onwards where Israel has occupied militarily those lands that the

Americans have tended to be uncritical towards Israel and given them unconditional diplomatic and military support. What's the motivation? Why would I mean, that's a lot of money we sent. Yeah, 20 billion. I saw that we sent many, many billions since then. I mean, Well, like I said, these, the same thing with Ukraine. I mean, a lot of these American arms manufacturers are making huge profits out of the war in Ukraine as well as the war in Gaza. I think what people might not understand

is when the United States gives aid to a country, like I think back in, sometime in the spring, America gave 60 billion to Ukraine. But if I remember correctly, about 40 billion of that comes directly back to the American, the big five weapons manufacturers, Raytheon, Boeing, and others. So the aid we're giving just gets directly, most of it gets directly kicked back to the weapons manufacturers. And there's a well-known revolving door between people that work for like the department of defense, government positions in America, and also working for these weapons manufacturers. Like

there is a lot of kind of back and forth with, with how people were employed. And so there is this internal kind of, well, it's a military industrial complex that Eisenhower talked about. Yes. And also when the war in Ukraine ends and Ukraine has to pay back all its debts to the U.S., I think that part of that, the way they will settle their debts is by giving a lot of their wheat production into the hands of American big agri business corporations who will take over agriculture in the Ukraine. So look where the money is going. Follow the money.

I think that's the clue. Yeah. And as many people would say, America is not a democracy. America is a plutocracy. To be a politician, to be a presidential candidate in America, either you need to be a billionaire or you need the support of billionaires. And so all these powerful corporations back their candidates. And you can see this happening with Trump, you can see this with Biden, the Democratic Party, they are beholden to these high tech companies, oil lobby, the pharmaceutical lobby,

which is why you have so many corporate lawyers in Washington DC. I think there are more corporate lawyers in Washington DC than the rest of the world put together. They're all lobbying for their particular cause. They're not interested in the common good, let alone the global common good. Now in any other country that would be called corruption, but not in the US. The way that politicians are bought by these powerful lobbies. And in the case of Israel, you have the disproportionate influence

of this group called AIPAC, the American Israel, which are older Jews, not the young secular Jews who are out on the streets protesting against Netanyahu and what's happening in Gaza, but this is the older generation of very rich Jews who since the 1960s have been interfering in American politics. They have the clout to unseat congressmen who speak in support of the Palestinians. The most famous case

was Senator William Fulbright in the 1970s who lost his seat because of pressure from AIPAC. And we've seen this more recently in Atlanta, I think. So they have a disproportionate influence. So while we talk about the Russians and the Iranians trying to influence American political campaigns, we don't talk about the influence of AIPAC and Israel on American politics. Yeah. I've been doing a lot of research and reading on this. And I mean, I can just say publicly that literally everything you're saying word for word is exactly what I'm, what I'm seeing. And this is, I don't know, for me, when I pay attention to American politics, like we've had the Republican convention, and then now more recently the democratic convention and just all the political back

and forth. And sometimes Christians can get caught up in that, which side am I on? You know? And I'm like, there's so much going on behind the scenes, everything you're talking about, but no one's going to talk about that. No one's going to talk about the million billionaires behind the scenes that are really at the end of the day, controlling, dictating the political movements in the US. So for us to get so caught up in the facade of the political rhetoric, the political back and forth, to me, it's like, it's just a distraction. I don't want to say it's a complete circus, but it kind of is. Like there's such deeper, deeper, deeper things going on that are

just not talked about because people want their money. I mean, yes, I wish American Christians would look at their country through the eyes of their brothers and sisters in other parts of the world. And many of us are actually disgusted when we see how so-called Bible-believing evangelical Christians can still be wanting as precedent a man who is not only a convicted felon, but who has broken every single one of the Ten Commandments. How on earth can they want a man like that to occupy the most powerful political position in the world, and then to have their taxes

being used by their governments to support genocide. How can they have congressmen who give a standing ovation to a man who is wanted for war crimes? Now, this is the puzzle. We just don't understand what it means when American Christians call themselves, you know, Christians. What kind of Christianity are they talking about? It's very remote from what Jesus and the apostles were preaching. And this is why there's so much cynicism towards evangelical Christianity, not only in the US, but also in our country. So the word evangelical has become a dirty word. And it's a word of, you know, used with distrust or ridicule in many circles. Would you say that that's a pretty typical perspective outside of America?

Among Christians? Yes. Among Christians? Like... Among non-Christians. Oh, okay. Yeah. Okay. Like they don't understand how... Like I said, there are many Christians, particularly Pentecostal Christians who are not all, but certainly who are highly influenced by what comes from America through the mega churches and this kind of Zionist propaganda that those in the older denominations, mainstream churches are as critical as I am. But I'm talking of non-Christians who go by what the media report

and the media does not see by and large non-Zionist Christians, non-nationalist Christians in America out on the streets protesting the use of their tax monies to support Netanyahu. They don't see that. I don't see that on any of the television channels because I know that there are Christians like that, Christians like you, for example, but you don't occupy that public media position. The people who are in the public media, the ones who are most vocal, are the ones who are supporting whatever the American government does,

or whatever Trump says, or whatever he does. That's the distortion in the media, which actually works against us and makes the gospel less credible to our non-Christian friends and our societies. Would most people in Sri Lanka, both Christian and non-Christian, be critical of the state of Israel? Yes.

Yes. I think the majority would be quite critical. But our voice doesn't count. What about outside of Sri Lanka, in other parts of the world that's your doll. Well, in India, India, because India has a Hindu nationalist government. Okay. The prime minister of India is as bad as Nathan Yahoo. And he's an ally of Nathan Yahoo's because they get a lot of, um, surveillance equipment from Israel to monitor the Muslim population in India as well as Christians. So again, this is another irony that the US supports India despite the fact that the US State Department in its annual reports have always highlighted

the lack of religious liberty in India. India comes quite high on the lack of religious liberty, and yet it's a strong ally of the US because the US would prefer to line up with India than with China and wants to use. So we are caught in this sort of big power swabble. What's the relationship between Sri Lanka and India like? Are they very similar culturally and politically or no? Well, they're different. We are, historically, we've never been part of India. We are mostly a Buddhist,

largely a Buddhist population, 65%, although we have significant Hindu and Muslim minorities. But because India is so much larger and much more powerful, our policies sometimes are constrained by India. And we are currently facing a huge economic crisis and so we are dependent on India and China for a lot of aid. And India, China and the US have their own sort of interests in Sri Lanka because they want, because of our geopolitical position,

all three major powers want some kind of foothold in Sri Lanka. So we have visits from the US Navy from time to time, the Chinese Navy, the Indian Navy, and so Sri Lanka has to politically jockey a position between those three competing powers for some kind of military presence, because they want to, each of those powers

wants to control the Indian Ocean. And Sri Lanka is situated such that it's in a key position. So even though we are a poor country and a very small country, geopolitically we are strategic in the key position. So even though we are a poor country and a very small country, geopolitically, we are strategic in the present climate. Pete Okay. I want to ask you a question. Going back to Americans, our political identity, if someone said, I want you to come preach a sermon at this, say, a megachurch, say 30,000 people, and we want you to preach on a Christian political identity. We want you to challenge

American Christians on how they should view themselves as a citizen in the United States, but also primarily a citizen in God's global kingdom. What would, I'm asking you to write a sermon on the spot here, but I'm sure you have some material you can draw on. Like, what are some of the main things you would want to challenge American Christians with? Well, I would say what I said earlier, and that is, what is our primary identity as Christians? And this comes back to what is the gospel that we believe in? And I would try to break Americans out of this very individualistic understanding of the gospel. The gospel is not about God and me. It's about how through the life and the death and the resurrection of Jesus, God is forming

a new creation, a new humanity. As Paul puts it in Ephesians chapter 2, he has broken down the dividing wall between Jew and Gentile, reconciling us in one body to God through the cross. So the gospel is about a new community centered in Christ that embraces people of all ages, cultures, ethnicities, languages. So when I become a Christian, I am joining a new global community, which now is my primary site of belonging. It's not that I cease to be white or black or male or female or Sri Lankan or American, but all these other identities are relativized in relation to what God has done and is doing and is going to do through Jesus Christ. And so my calling then is to bear witness to this new creation that is coming

into being, a kingdom that is characterized by justice, by reconciliation, so that the unity of the body of Christ is central to the gospel. Now we don't see that when we look at America. We see individualistic gospels, we see divided churches, churches divided on lines of personality, color, ethnicity, whatever. So then what is the gospel that is going out from these churches? It cannot be the gospel that we find in the New Testament. You know, you don't find in the New Testament churches only for Jews or only for rich people and other churches only for Gentiles, other churches only for the poor. That is simply reflecting, mirroring the divisions that are already there in society.

So the church should be the place where these divisions are being broken down. People who don't normally associate with one another are coming together to love each other, to listen to each other, to learn from each other and to be signs and instruments of God's liberating rule, his kingdom. So that is what I would preach and I keep preaching for those who have ears to hear. So one of the challenges of eating healthy is that it can be hard to find time to cook meals from scratch when you can just drive through Jack in the Box and pick up half a dozen tacos. And I look, I completely get it. Can't say I haven't done that before, but I do try to eat healthy. And yet I'm also often on the go. This is why I love Factor. Factor

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20% off your next month. So. So that's code theology, raw 50 at factor meals.com forward slash theology raw 50 to get 50% off your first box plus 20% off your next month. While your subscription is active, go check it out. What does being a good citizen in this? I going to say citizen in America, but this would apply to anybody's national citizenship, what does it look like to seek the good of the city, to submit to governing authorities, to pay taxes? Sometimes people say, well, no, if we're going to truly love our neighbor, well, we need to participate in political systems.

We need to vote the right person in, vote the right person out. Like, political participation, involvement is an outflow of our command to love our neighbor well. I mean, maybe there's some legitimacy to that. Do you have any thoughts on that? Like, what does it look like to be a good citizen? Well, yes. But again, the question is the question that the lawyer put to Jesus. Well, who is my neighbor? And how did Jesus answer? My neighbor is not my fellow Christian, not my fellow, you know, citizen. My neighbor may well be a person living on the other side of the globe but whose livelihoods, whose freedom is being severely impacted by what my country is doing in the world. It may be by my own lifestyle, the food that I eat, the clothes that I wear, you know, the devices that I use. How are these affecting people at the other end of the world?

Because now they are my neighbor, we are connected to each other. Now those are the questions that we need to be exploring as a church. So yes, Christians should be politically involved, but we must be careful that our political involvement is shaped by the gospel, the values of the gospel, you know, and not not just a republican mindset or a democrat mindset, you know. And the sad thing is Christians are going into politics around, I see this in other parts of the world as well, thinking that once they're in politics they can use their political position to promote their narrow church agenda without working out first what is a Christian political vision, what should Christians be doing when they're in positions of power, how do they use their power

not for their own interests or the interests narrowly defined of their church or denomination, but to serve the public good, the common good. How do they use that power to serve the global good? If the world is threatened by global world, tyrannies, how do we use power responsibly to mitigate the effects of this? Now those are the questions that Christians and Christian churches should be discussing but sadly the Christians who have been in positions of power and who are in positions of power in the US today, People like Mark Johnson or Mike Pence or whatever, when you listen to them speaking, they are not being shaped by a Christian theological understanding. And that's again, what is dreadful because they're mocked, they're ridiculed.

Whenever they try to speak for Christianity and identify Christianity with some partisan position. Do you think a Christian could remain a faithful Christian while occupying a place of government power? I often wrestle with that. Well, yes, again, because it's our understanding of politics is all about compromises. But you have to have wisdom to know well what compromises are legitimate and necessary and what are not. And that's true also not just in government, I think even within church politics, in institutional churches. We are often having to like hold together people and positions who are diametrically opposed to each other. And if we are to actually build an inclusive pluralist society, an inclusive church that

welcomes different theological voices, theological positions, we have to grow in the art of Christian politics. Where do we have to compromise? Where do we have to change? And where do we have to grow in the art of Christian politics. Where do we have to compromise? Where do we have to change? And where do we have to not compromise? So those are difficult decisions, but that's the stuff of all politics, not only in government, but in all institutions.

The easy thing is what happens in America. If you don't like what is being said in the pulpit, you just leave and you start your own church. And so you end up with not churches, but these religious ghettos, religious clubs, where everybody is the same, thinks the same. And that is a denial of the gospel of reconciliation, of building what Martin Luther King called beloved community. The idea of compromise, that is hard for me because it's like, how do you determine what you should compromise on and what you shouldn't compromise on? You know, like, what kind of,

and we don't really have a good biblical model. We see this happening in the early church. We see this happening in the early church in Acts 15, the Council of Jerusalem, where again, and you find also Peter in Acts 11 and 12, he's dragged, Acts 10 and 11, he's dragged to the home of Cornelius, the first time in history that a Jew is entering the home of a gentile. And Peter begins not by preaching but by listening to this gentile tell his own story of his own encounter with God. And then Peter says, now I understand that God has no favorites. So Peter's own understanding of the gospel is deepened and widened through his exposure

to a stranger, a foreigner, just as Cornelius now needs to hear the story of Jesus from the lips of Peter to receive the assurance of the forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit. And then they are bonded together into this new community. So unless we are willing to compromise our stances and learn from the other, we don't grow, we don't mature. And so what we need to compromise, we shouldn't compromise is not something we can figure out beforehand, before the dialogue, before the conversation. It's something that only emerges in the conversation, through the conversation with others who are

different to us. I just think going back to like, AIPAC and all the million billionaires controlling so many things, like if a Christian was pretty high up in the political system, let's just say in America, that's the only context I know. And he says, you know what? I'm not going to take a dime from any lobby that's trying to pay me to try to buy me out so that I can push through whatever thing they want me to push through. I'm going to say no to any, all that stuff. And I'm not going to tear down my opponent. I'm going to love my enemy. I'm going to wash their feet. I'm going to love my neighbor. I'm going to say no to any, all that stuff. And I'm not going to tear down my opponent. I'm going to love my enemy. I'm going to wash their feet. I'm going to love my neighbor. I'm going to say no to any. So somebody tried to buy me out by money. I mean, how long would

you actually this, that those, those things seem to be so deeply embedded in the system that it, I guess I'm a little skeptical that you could maintain these really core Christian values and remain in that system very long, at least at the higher up level. I'm a little skeptical that you could maintain these really core Christian values and remain in that system very long, at least at the higher up level. I'm not talking about like local like city council or something. I don't think the corruption is as deep there, I don't think. But I don't know. But I've never been in that position.

So maybe I have a too cynical view of reality. Well, I meet with a couple of Christian politicians here in Sri Lanka. They're the only two Christians in our parliament. And we have been meeting together with others regularly for the last 15 years. And we discuss these issues together. How they should vote on a particular issue that's coming up in parliament, where they should compromise, not compromise. So I would say to Christians in positions of power and not only in government, power in the corporate sector, power in the judiciary, power in other institutions, universities for example. You need to have a group of people who are wise, who are theologically astute, with whom

you can discuss the issues, the moral issues that you are facing. If you don't have the humility to listen and to learn from the wider body of Christ, whom you represent, then you will end up either making foolish, dreadful compromises, just going with the system, or just dropping out. There is a way that you can navigate the mess, provided you're willing to listen and learn from others. That's interesting. What's it like being a Christian in the parliament in Sri Lanka? Do you deal with similar corruption, abuse of power, money that drives everything? Yes, exactly. And I'm very proud of our two politicians because, you know, they're both Christians.

And like I said, Christian, even when they went into politics, they were accused of being agents of the CIA. And yet they have one credibility amongst large sectors of the population, non-Christians who respect them because they're known as people of integrity, who are not corrupt, cannot be bribed, who are outspoken when it comes to human rights and abuses of power. You know, they have won the right to speak, their credibility. But sadly, they get very little support from the churches, financial support or people who are willing to go and, you know, clerk for them, help them in practical ways. We have elections coming up and they both have shared with me, you know, they get very little support from the churches, especially the evangelical churches, who think that, well, you know, they shouldn't be

politicians, they should be pastors. But whenever, say, a church is being attacked by a mob, then they want these politicians to speak up in parliament. Wow. Well, what do you, we still have a few more minutes left. What are you currently thinking through? Are you writing a book right now? When you wake up in the morning? Well, I wrote a short article, just 1500 words for the Lausanne movement, who are having a big congress in Seoul. I'm not part of Lausanne. I'm not going for it. But they asked me if I would just write an article for the delegates going to the Zan on this topic of the impact of the Kingdom of God in all areas of life, which I did and

they put it up on their website. So I've been writing like articles like that for various people. I've been giving a lot of talks to secular and Christian audiences recently on the ethics of artificial intelligence. That's an issue that concerns me, but I don't think I have anything new to say that would legitimize a book. There are lots of books coming out which are saying so much better what I would want to say. But again, sadly, many of those books are actually written by thoughtful, non-Christian ethicists or philosophers.

What's your position on AI in a nutshell? Again, like all technologies, useful as tools, but not when they become masters and control us. And there's a great danger that we bow before our tools and give them control over our lives. And so they begin to shape us in their image. And then they become idols. So actually the first book that I ever wrote was a book called Gods That Fail. That was in 1996, but it's been reprinted in 2016. It's still in print, which is basically about modern secular gods, idols. whenever we turn technology or science or market forces or the nation state

into an idol and we give them an allegiance that they don't deserve, we put them in the place of God. They are the new modern secular gods. So I see AI as fitting into that whole way, the hype about AI. Yeah. You know, I don't believe in the great dystopian fears that AI is going to take over the world. And to me, that's farfetched. As farfetched as the utopian fields, that AI is going to solve all our political and social and economic problems. I am interested in the way that AI is currently being used, the way that people's data is being used, the way that governments and corporations are using our personal data, the way that

certain groups of people are being discriminated against. Yeah, all these people who are being exploited by these AI companies, the growing power that AI, the five tech giants, as well as some Chinese corporations, they represent power without accountability. We can't hold them to account like we can governments and we have allowed them to become more powerful than most governments and that's dangerous. Wow. Well, Vinod, thank you so much for your time. I've been looking forward to talking to you for a while and this, yeah, I really appreciate your voice and yeah, this really stimulating conversation.

So where can people find you in your work? I know you have a blog that you have. What's that? Where is that at? Yes. I mean, I have a blog. I haven't written something for a couple of months. Vinodramachandra.wordpress.com Well, thanks so much for being on the show. Really appreciate it. Well, thank you so much, Preston. Thank you. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.

Greetings and God bless. This is Tyler Burns. And this is Dr. Jamar Tisby. And we want to invite you to check out our podcast, Pass the Mic, Dynamic Voices for a Diverse Church. Pass the Mic has been speaking directly to the core concerns of Black Christians for over a decade. On our show, we've got interviews from theologians, historians, actors, activists, and so much more.

Not to mention heartfelt, open dialogue on some of the heaviest issues facing the church in the United States. Be sure to subscribe to the show on iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. We'll see you there on the next Pass the Mic. Hi, I'm Haven and as long as I can remember, I have had different curiosities and thoughts and ideas that I like to explore, usually with a girlfriend over a matcha latte. But then when I had kids, I just didn't have the same time that I did before for the one-on-ones that I crave.

So I started Haven the Podcast. It's a safe space for curiosity and conversation and we talk about everything from relationships to parenting to friendships to even your view of yourself and we don't have answers or solutions but I think the power is actually in the questions so I'd love for you to join me. Haven the podcast.