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Special Episode: CSLR Study on Law and Ministry
34 Plays1 year ago
In a special episode of the Interactions podcast, Whittney Barth and John Bernau sat down to discuss some of the report's main findings with three distinguished guests: Rev. Dr. Ted Smith, Rev. Caroline Magee, and Rev. Ingrid McIntyre. While our guests were not involved in the study, we brought them in to talk about three themes that emerged from the study, including the nature of theological education, the role of a pastor versus the role of a lawyer, and ministers’ interactions with government.
CSLR would like to thank the Lilly Endowment, Inc., for their generous support of the Center’s law and ministry study. Our executive producer is Eythen Anthony. Our theme music is “Elevator Pitch” by Shane Ivers from silvermansound.com. To learn more about Center for the Study of Law and Religion and the study on law and ministry, please visit cslr.law.emory.edu
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Transcript
Adapting Religious Leadership
00:00:02
Speaker
I think there's a whole generation of people who are leading religious institutions today or teaching in theological schools who feel a lot like Lyman Beecher. Like I got really good at this and now at this world that is now gone. And so what am I going to do now? Being pastoral isn't the same as being passive. And sometimes there are very practical things to do and actions to take.
00:00:28
Speaker
And the way, what I really liked about law and why I practiced and do practice is it's a way things get done in the world. It's a conversion of an idea into actual activity with the interests of different parties codified and represented.
Building Political Connections for Advocacy
00:00:50
Speaker
politicians can't be experts on everything. And so it's really our job if we want to advocate for something to really build relationships with council members, with the vice mayor, with the mayor, with whoever makes up your city government and say, here's what we're experiencing firsthand on the ground.
Introduction to Interactions Podcast
00:01:14
Speaker
Welcome to the Interactions Podcast, brought to you by the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University. Now in its 40th year, our center explores the interactions of law and religion through research and scholarship, teaching and training, and public programs. My name is Whitney Barth, and I'm the executive director of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion and the Charlotte McDaniel Scholar.
00:01:33
Speaker
My name is John Bernoff, a sociologist and director of digital scholarship at the center. This is a special episode of the Interactions podcast and was inspired by a multi-year study on law and ministry that the center is currently wrapping up.
Study on Protestant Ministers' Legal Issues
00:01:48
Speaker
Funded by a grant from the Lilly Endowment Incorporated, the study uses different research methods to identify and assess the legal issues faced by Protestant ministers and churches.
00:01:59
Speaker
as well as factors such as current levels of legal knowledge among pastors and church leaders and the sources of that knowledge or training.
Theological Education and Government Interaction
00:02:07
Speaker
In this episode, we explore three themes that emerge from the study, including the nature of theological education, the role of a pastor versus the role of a lawyer, and ministers interactions with the government.
Ted Smith on Theological Education Evolution
00:02:18
Speaker
We'll hear from Ted Smith, the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Divinity and Associate Dean of Faculty at Emory's Candler School of Theology, whose latest book, The End of Theological Education, grapples with the current state of theological education. We'll also talk with the Reverend Caroline McGee, a priest for the Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta and a practicing attorney, about her role as both a minister and a lawyer.
00:02:45
Speaker
Our third guest is Reverend Ingrid McIntyre, a minister within the United Methodist Church and founder of Open Table Nashville. She talks about her various interactions with government in the course of her experience running nonprofit organizations. While our guests were not involved in the study, we brought them in to talk about some of these emerging themes.
Minister's Role Evolution in America
00:03:05
Speaker
We're excited to share these conversations with you now on the Interactions podcast.
00:03:16
Speaker
We're delighted to have as our guest this morning, the Reverend Dr. Ted Smith. Ted is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Divinity and Associate Dean of Faculty at Emory's Candler School of Theology. In addition to numerous publications, Ted has recently authored a book entitled The End of Theological Education, published just this year by Eerdmans. Ted, thank you so much for joining us today.
00:03:38
Speaker
Thank you. I'm really happy to be here. We'd like to talk with you this morning about that recent book, The End of Theological Education. So I'll go ahead and dive right in with our first question. In leading up to your arguments for a new vision of theological education, you trace the evolution of the role of the minister in the context of the United States from the process of professionalization, not unlike that of lawyers and doctors, to this new era of post-professionalism. For those who may not have had an opportunity yet to read your book,
00:04:08
Speaker
Could you please summarize your core arguments in just a few sentences? Oh, it's a daunting question. Yeah. Well, thanks again for the interest in the book and for this really insightful question. One of the things I'm trying to do in the book is to connect the form that ministry takes and therefore the form that theological education takes
00:04:31
Speaker
to connect those to larger social formations. And I think too often the study of theological education has proceeded as if it were this little hermetically sealed universe in which everything, the cause of everything was happening within the seminary itself.
Historical Context of Ministry
00:04:48
Speaker
It's just not like that at all. So one of the things, one of the arguments of the book is that ministry has changed shape with some different constellations of institutions and different social imaginaries.
00:04:59
Speaker
So, I describe a standing order in the colonial period, never fully realized, but still shaping of the imaginary. I think of the people who were building the institutions. And in the standing order, ministry is a kind of office.
Transformation and Instability in Ministry
00:05:13
Speaker
With the rise of voluntary associations in the early national period, ministry becomes, and then especially through the 19th century, ministry becomes more of what we think of as a profession.
00:05:23
Speaker
and indeed creates a lot of the space for professionals of many kinds. The kind of institutional networks and the form of education that became prevalent in law, medicine, and other professions. That's all created in the 19th century.
00:05:42
Speaker
And I think it depended not just on the network of voluntary associations, but also on other larger material sources. I've got kind of a classic Weberian account of the rise of professions as a space between labor and capital, but also as a public vocation marked by autonomy and fiduciary responsibility. All of those things come together, kind of consolidate as a profession.
00:06:10
Speaker
And you get a middle-class existence, or maybe even upper-middle class, and you get to do good. It's a very thisworldly sort of salvation. I think all of those professions are coming unraveled now as professions. So in ministry, to kind of complete the arc,
00:06:31
Speaker
If we move from a ministry as an office to ministry as profession, I don't think in this current kind of constellation of institutions, ministry has assumed a stable form. I try to name this time as one of authentic individuals. And I think what you see are ministry forms that grow out of and respond to those social realities. So I think we see kind of inklings of the form that's emerging in chaplains.
00:06:59
Speaker
and in life coaches, in community organizers, and in celebrities. These are forms that are all there in ministry today. But the unraveling of ministry as a profession, it's not unique to ministry. I mean, it's happening. You all would know law better than I.
00:07:18
Speaker
I think it's especially clear in medicine where now a recent AMA study had 70% of physicians under 40 working for firms that they do not own.
Mega Churches and Professional Notions
00:07:30
Speaker
So you move, that's really different for medicine, right? And autonomy has a material dimension, the autonomy of a profession. And if you're an employee, even a super highly skilled employee, you're not a professional in that old sense.
00:07:45
Speaker
And we see it in ministry too, where as mega churches grow, they will have many people on the staff who are ministers. But those ministers are employees of a large corporation. And they're not professional in the kind of classic sense of that term.
Lane Seminary's Role in Social Issues
00:08:04
Speaker
So that's some of the migrations that I'm trying to trace in the book. And it wasn't just a few sentences, I'm sorry. No, that's great. No, that's really helpful. Thank you. Fascinating.
00:08:14
Speaker
I wanted to talk a little bit about the opening of your book. You start with this account of Lane Seminary in Cincinnati, Ohio, which was led by the Reverend Lyman Beecher in the 1830s. You discuss how the school was gripped by student activism on different issues like anti-colonialism and abolition.
00:08:33
Speaker
That activism was at odds with a lot of the views of the faculty and the board of trustees, which led to this effort to rid the seminary of many of these students. You actually have this great quote from the Cincinnati Journal. They report, quote, parents and guardians may now send their sons and wards to the Lane Seminary with perfect confidence that the proper business of a theological school will occupy their minds.
00:08:58
Speaker
and that the discussion and decision of abstract questions will not turn them aside from the path of duty. You then write, Lane survived but was never the same. One of the things that stood out to us about this example and your choice to open with it was that it places these seminaries at the heart of these very pressing political, legal, moral issues. You also use the term parable. I mean, this is kind of the opening parable of your book.
00:09:26
Speaker
I wonder if you could tell us a bit about your decision to start with a story and maybe the significance of using that word parable as kind of the opening gambit of the book. Yeah. There are a lot of reasons to start with Lane. One of them is that it doesn't exist anymore, so I won't offend anyone. It's kind of a jokey pragmatic reason, but it's a real pragmatic reason. But that really wasn't the largest.
00:09:54
Speaker
Another part of it was the uncanny similarities between what happened at Lane in the 1830s and what's happening now. So you name some of them, but you've got you've got a faculty, student body and trustees that are absolutely riven over questions of race. Beecher also takes office in the middle of a pandemic.
00:10:15
Speaker
And students were dying. The campus was in quarantine, right? I was writing this book in a time of quarantine and in a time when conflicts around race were breaking open institutions, including higher education institutions.
00:10:33
Speaker
So, all of that is there. Lane is also interesting to me because it is, just as you say, it's at the center of so many of these main developments of the 19th century. So, it's at the center of the crisis of slavery. Will it be an abolitionist institution? It ultimately decides to be kind of a centrist abolitionist institution and the radicals go and found Oberlin.
00:10:57
Speaker
That's where they migrate. But it's at the center of slavery. It's at the center of the rise of voluntary societies. It's at the center of westward expansion. It's in Cincinnati, right? And this is part of Beecher's argument that he makes for it when he does this great fundraising speech for it that was really one of the
00:11:14
Speaker
you know, celebrity events of the year, he went up and down the East Coast making what he called a plea for the West. And his argument was, look, the way we're going to take the West from the indigenous people and the Catholics who are already there, the way we're going to take the Mississippi Valley is by planting voluntary societies. And all of the leaders of voluntary societies, whether they are schools, libraries, churches, whatever they are,
00:11:40
Speaker
they're all going to be trained in the seminary. So in his view, the seminary is the key to winning the West, and the West is the key to winning the continent, and the continent is the key to winning the world for Christ. So there's the sacred mission of America, and the seminary, as Beecher tells it, is at the key, and I don't think he was wrong.
00:12:00
Speaker
So that fits with the larger argument of the book, which is that we, I already was saying, we have to see theological education as enmeshed in, caught in these larger forces. So Lane is really there. And then in Beecher, you have somebody who sees it and can name it so clearly and without any shame, right? To him, it's a real plus that this is to link it to manifest destiny, right? This is essential to the fundraising and it worked.
00:12:29
Speaker
And I think the other reason, two other things that drew me to Lane, one Beecher himself, you know, is really raised in the older system, the system of the standing order. And he was fully credentialed and a huge success in that order. And he had suffered and sacrificed and given his life to be really good at it. And now he finds himself in this totally new world that doesn't care.
00:12:52
Speaker
about any of his qualifications and where the institutions that he was trained to lead are all crumbling around him. I think there's a whole generation of people who are leading religious institutions today or teaching in theological schools who feel a lot like Lyman Beecher.
00:13:08
Speaker
I got really good at this world that is now gone. And so what am I going to do now? And Beecher made an adaptation that I think was quite interesting. And then the final reason to start with Lane is just to introduce a note of reflexivity into the book.
00:13:26
Speaker
I grew up in the Mississippi watershed, and I grew up in many ways downstream from Lane. Lane flowed into McCormick Theological Seminary, which is where my own Presbyterian pastors were all trained. So I'm trying to, I feel like an heir of sorts, for better and for worse, to the project that was at Lane in all of its complexities and inconsistencies. So I'm trying to do what our colleague here at Emory, Georgiansi, is called to tarry with whiteness and to think about what that is.
00:13:56
Speaker
Dwelling with Lane for a while is a way to do that. So to your parable question, I hesitate to answer it because parables like jokes, if you explain them, it's usually bad.
00:14:18
Speaker
But I'll say this, because I do want people to take the genre of parables seriously in reading that. And here, you'll forgive me for leaning into the Reverend part of my title and just preaching a little bit.
00:14:33
Speaker
The parables of Jesus, they're overwhelmingly concerned with how to think about the reign of God and how the reign of God interacts with this world. So they're eschatological in their orientation. And I think it's not accidental that this is the genre
00:14:53
Speaker
This is the genre that is best suited to eschatology. When we try to talk about eschatology without indirection or irony or things that happen without our speaking them, then we fall into, you know, left behind kind of, we fall into all the worst stuff, or we fall into just a refusal to speak about eschatology, which is really where most of mainline Protestantism is. So we have to retain the genre of parable.
00:15:19
Speaker
And it's about, so I want to use it here to try to think eschatologically about theological education and to relate theological education to the reign of God. And part of my argument
New Models for Theological Education
00:15:36
Speaker
with Lane is that it was both glorious in some ways and deeply in collusion with powers and principalities, all of that at the same time.
00:15:49
Speaker
and it died, which is just to say it's a mortal thing, right? And yet, as I try to show at the end of the parable, it still was caught up in God's work of redemption. So, and to me, there's hope in that. I too am enmeshed in institutions that are both glorious and life-giving and also
00:16:11
Speaker
shot through with sin and collusion with powers of this world. And I want to trust that this work is caught up in things that are larger than our intentions. So that's what the parable is trying to do. Thank you.
00:16:28
Speaker
So in the last chapter of your book, you start to envision different kinds of institutional forms that theological schools might take in the future. Things like houses of refuge, maker space, late modern monastery, center of higher times, witting or unwitting, host of under commons. And you also acknowledge that one or more of these models might work in tandem with or run parallel to current models.
00:16:53
Speaker
And so while we don't have time to examine each one of those examples in turn, although we very much like to do so, I'm wondering about what you see as the types of knowledge or training theological school graduates will need to thrive and even to build this new world. Could you speak to that?
00:17:09
Speaker
Sure. One thing I'd say is that I do think the answers to that question are deeply contextual. And it's going to depend on the community. It's going to depend on the theological tradition. And so the first thing I want to do is to sort of give that question to multiple communities.
00:17:30
Speaker
At the same time, I don't want to just kind of give it to him and say, hey, that's yours. And I wash my hands of this. So to give it with some provocations and some resources, and you list, yeah, I think I call those fever dreams.
00:17:46
Speaker
of what a theological school might be. One of the things I'd say is that the professional model of theological education looks like a student prepares and gets a credential and then moves into a space of leadership.
00:18:04
Speaker
So that's the way, for instance, most of the leaders, the official leaders of the Civil Rights Movement were credentialed in that way, right? I don't think that that relationship holds anymore.
00:18:19
Speaker
When we look at the leaders of say the movement for black lives, the leaders of many of the most vibrant social movements, in a way the leadership comes first and then would come education or which is not as much a credentialing or a transfer of professional knowledge, but it's more that space for reflection. That's true in social movements. It's also increasingly true with
00:18:48
Speaker
with Christian ministry. So at Candler, we've started a new certificate program in ministry, La Mesa Institute for Theological Studies, in partnership, especially with Latino communities, but also with Korean, Korean American communities, with African immigrant communities, and with charismatic and Pentecostal communities.
00:19:10
Speaker
Most of the leaders that are going to come to La Mesa have already been pastors for a number of years, right? They're not getting a credential that enables them to begin ministry. So that's a really different model of ministry, right? Where you work with people who are already in the movement, already in ministry, and then you reflect with them on what's going
Students and Theological Education Renewal
00:19:30
Speaker
on. So I think that's one of the changes. I think another one is one that my students have taught me.
00:19:38
Speaker
And that is, we have a growing number of students who are not necessarily interested in professional leadership of a congregation or any professional role in ministry. I used to think it was my duty to, and I
00:19:55
Speaker
was notorious for this, of talking them into, helping them imagine their lives leading these institutions. And I still think there can be some value in that. Some of them do have these callings, and they've been alienated from them in ways they shouldn't be. But I also think what they often are bringing instead are what I've come to call projects of authenticity.
00:20:17
Speaker
They have real questions about God, about justice, about their faith, and about how they can put together a self in this world that has broken them out of all these traditional narratives and communities that would give them a self. And that is urgent work. And I think it's work that we have to take seriously as educators and not just see it as
00:20:40
Speaker
extended adolescence, but to see it, these are the selves that a late modern world makes, right? And these projects of authenticity take different forms, and they're really important. So I think one of the things theological education
00:20:59
Speaker
should do is to shift to prioritize those projects and questions. One, you know, it's an old joke among theological educators that you give some great lecture on Athanasius or something and then the student will come up and say, yeah, but will it preach?
00:21:16
Speaker
And that's really the question of the older dispensation. What they're asking is, that's great, but how can I use that in my professional role? That's not the question that people ask, that the students press anymore. Now the students press, but what does it mean to me? What does it mean for my life?
00:21:38
Speaker
And I think, you know, faculty trained in more vis-and-shaft-like modes of scholarship have always bristled a little at the question of, but will it preach? Because we're like, no, no, no, it's knowledge for its own sake. It's just good to know about Athanasius, and it is. But I think, so there's been resistance to that question.
00:21:58
Speaker
I think there is resistance to the question of, but what does this mean to me? But I think in a way, we can use the urgency of that question as an opportunity for renewal of the enterprise of theological education. The stakes are existential. The stakes in these questions do go that deep. They are about our whole lives. So what's it going to be like to teach in ways that put that on the surface instead of kind of burying it under layers of other kinds of knowledge?
00:22:28
Speaker
And we'll still study Athanasius, right? But we can bring these questions from projects of authenticity to that study. That's great. Yeah, that's great. Thank you so much for your time this morning. And we really appreciate you speaking with us about the book and the ways you're thinking about theological education moving forward. Thanks for your interest and thanks for your care in engaging the argument. I really appreciate it.
00:23:02
Speaker
That was the Reverend Dr. Ted Smith, the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Divinity and Associate Dean of Faculty at Emory's Candler School of Theology. His book, The End of Theological Education, is out now from Eerdmans Press.
Caroline McGee's Dual Role Exploration
00:23:15
Speaker
Our next conversation is with Reverend Caroline McGee, who in her role as both a minister and a lawyer, reflects on the ways law and religion have shaped her bivocational career.
00:23:30
Speaker
We're delighted to have as our guest today, Caroline McGee. Caroline has a JD from Emory Law School and a Master of Divinity from Candler School of Theology. After leaving Emory, Caroline worked as an associate attorney at King and Spalding and has served as a priest for the Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta in various capacities. Caroline, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to participate in this conversation.
00:23:57
Speaker
So we'd like to talk with you about your work as both a lawyer and as a minister. Why don't we start by describing for us your career path after leaving Emory? So after leaving Emory, I went directly to King & Spalding where I practice corporate law and I've ended up doing a total of about nine years
00:24:17
Speaker
It was a fantastic experience, all corporate legal work. I learned a lot, worked with some of the highest caliber attorneys that I know. And along the way, that journey was a little bit broken up. It wasn't a continuous nine years. I had graduated the MDiv program at Candler, certain that I was not called to ordained ministry and in the way that calls to ordained ministry work.
00:24:44
Speaker
time passed and I continued to reflect and wonder if maybe I could serve the community in that way and reached back out to the Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta. We agreed that I would proceed with the ordination discernment process and take some extra coursework over at Candler, which was fantastic and then was ordained in 2014 as a priest in the Episcopal Church.
00:25:09
Speaker
So I have a wonderful career that, while I'm not like Paul in most ways, the shared, the multi-vocational track, I think Paul would recognize. And I find it a real privilege to be able to serve with church communities, parishes on Sundays or for other needs. And then I work most of the time in the world.
00:25:32
Speaker
as an attorney, or currently I'm working on the business side, and I expect I'll continue to move in those spaces the rest of my career. Thank you so much for sharing with us your journey. That's great. As we mentioned at the onset, the center is wrapping up this study on law and ministry. As part of that study, we conducted focus groups on ministers or church leaders.
00:25:58
Speaker
And one of the things that we found from these focus groups is that when it came to problem solving, several of these respondents made a distinction between pastoral thinking and legal thinking in situations of potential crisis. And we're wondering, given your experience as both an attorney and a priest, does this distinction resonate with you? And if so, how? I think
00:26:24
Speaker
The pastoral presence is constant. We learned, particularly, I did my chaplaincy at the VA hospital here in Atlanta, and a lot of what we learned was how to be a non-anxious presence in a space, and that skill is useful all the time.
00:26:46
Speaker
I also find it valuable to remember the dignity of every human being. So in any context, even if it's pretty charged, being in touch with the ability to maintain some sort of inner calm and reflect that you are respecting the dignity of everyone in the room or everyone in the conversation and all of their perspectives, kind of creating a space where that's the dynamic. It's reduced reactivity.
00:27:16
Speaker
just more respect, I find that in that space, others can be more creative and there can also be just more grace, which allows us to make better decisions, more thoughtful decisions, whether they're legal decisions or other types of decisions. What I liked about that legal thinking distinction,
00:27:40
Speaker
Being pastoral isn't the same as being passive. And sometimes there are very practical things to do and actions to take. And the way what I really liked about law and why I practiced and do practice is it's a way things get done in the world. It's a conversion of an idea into
00:27:59
Speaker
actual activity with the interests of different parties codified and represented. That's something I really like about it and being able to move past emotion or I guess move with emotion into a place where we can make decisions and choices and take the next practical steps and legal thinking. There's all kinds of ways to consider
00:28:26
Speaker
What action can we take? What is possible here? Who are the parties that we need to consider or who are the parties who might help us? There is something we can do in most situations. A beautiful place on the pastoral side is there's also a time in certain types of crises or life passages where the time for doing has passed and then we are just present. And that is a completely different space
00:28:56
Speaker
And that pastoral awareness can help if we're in a place where we need to move to more presence and reflection versus activity. Or if we just need some space either to grieve or feel other complex emotions that can't be
00:29:17
Speaker
there isn't an activity, there's no legal remedy for those conditions. That's where another place that pastoral thinking is really useful. And I find it a blessing to be with people when we're together in that place where we're not doing, we're just being. That's great.
00:29:40
Speaker
Yeah, wow, that's a really powerful reflection on both pieces of your experiences. And it sounds like there's some level of fluidity that you're able to have as you move back and forth between those places. It's really powerful.
00:29:56
Speaker
Caroline, another component of the study, we're very interested in the training that ministers receive, as well as the training that law students receive for lawyers. So I was wondering if you could tell us a bit about, is there a certain skill or an area of the law that you were encountered during law school that's been really beneficial to your work as a priest? I don't know if it was a particular skill so much as hearing
00:30:26
Speaker
the enthusiasm of my professors talking about their areas of law. It got me excited about the power that law can have in the world and both Professor Frank Alexander, who was at Emory for a long time and Professor Whitty were among my teachers and
00:30:49
Speaker
It was like their deep knowledge and enthusiasm for their practice areas. Professor Alexander was very much in real estate and sort of the tangible impacts on communities of how
00:31:04
Speaker
real estate is is deployed. And then Professor Whitty much more on the constitutional side and the intersections of law and religion and constitutionality. And it was it's infectious to have be educated by people who are that excited about what can happen in their areas of law and you
00:31:25
Speaker
learn the dynamism of those areas of law, it's not static. Even if you're reading cases from a long time ago, the way the law is applied in different contexts that today has impact. And it just kept me very excited about what the law is capable of doing for actual people every single day.
00:31:50
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's sometimes it can be difficult to kind of realize that when you're reading this case, sometimes 100 years old, sometimes 50 years old, or even several years old, that this actually people's lives and something
00:32:06
Speaker
A whole process led them to this point of filing a suit or having, you know, defending themselves. And so I think it's an interesting it's interesting thing to kind of recognize that, yeah, this is this is impactful in people's lives in really profound ways. And I vividly remember I remember the graphic in my constitutional law textbook. It was over the Brown versus Board of Education, and it still gives me chills.
00:32:35
Speaker
It was an eagle, like there was like a pedestal and there's an eagle kind of advancing up to the pedestal and pushing a crow off the pedestal so it could, the eagle could climb back on and you just get chills of like, that's how powerful. It looks like words on paper written a long time ago, but it's,
00:32:58
Speaker
It's whether it can impact how people are fully included in our community or not. I found that both in law school and at seminary, I would just get chills in both classes for some of the same reasons, the kind of power and beauty and
00:33:23
Speaker
Yeah, I don't even know quite how to put it, but I just sort of feeling the advancing of justice in what should be, what seems to be two very different contexts, but in moments you can see that they're not all that different after all.
Ingrid McIntyre's Advocacy Journey
00:33:41
Speaker
Yeah. Well, and kind of turning to that, the theological side of your training, we're wondering if there's anything like a topic that you encountered in seminary that really impacted your work as an attorney that sticks with you even today. So it was Professor Strawn's Old Testament class. I took Old Testament with him at Candler.
00:34:06
Speaker
And that was my first experience with a really deep academic education of scripture. And he was talking about in the Torah, the books of the law, that there's a repeated pattern of that God gives the law, but the structure is always grace first and then the law, grace first and then the law. And that is,
00:34:34
Speaker
that is how God treats God's people. And that just kind of left a permanent impact on me that it helps me both theologically in my reflections about God, no matter sort of what is going on for God, grace comes first. And then of course, there are laws that follow and flow from that, but grace is primary. And that,
00:35:03
Speaker
there are ways to maintain that attitude and just regular secular law also, maybe not so much in the documents themselves, depending, but in the way we treat other people, the way we treat the people that we're in conversation with about legal issues. I think it can transform that aspect of practice. So that was one of them. And then I am very,
00:35:33
Speaker
incarnational and that the incarnation, the kind of blessedness of, of being embodied and in a body that lives in community. Um, that is a huge, I don't, I don't view a lot of our day to day work may not feel blessed or sacred, but I think through the idea of the incarnation, like that's exactly what, um, Jesus was, was doing in being embodied and
00:36:03
Speaker
hanging out with people and doing people things and eating meals and just walking around doing work in the world like we all do every day. I think it marked for all of us that our daily lives are blessed, even if they feel just very practical and logistical and not transcendent. Somehow they are, and they're certainly sacred.
00:36:32
Speaker
that concept of incarnation just informs the way I interact with the world, hopefully. Sometimes in traffic, I'm not very, I'm not demonstrating my respect for the dignity of every human being, but we all have slip-ups. Grace. Right, right, Grace. Well, excellent. Well, is there anything else about your experience as both a lawyer and as a priest that you would like to share with us today?
00:37:01
Speaker
I guess nothing other than it's an enormous privilege. I love being able to participate with families in baptisms and also just working on contracts with a team that's been up really late and everyone's working really hard and trying to maintain their sense of humor.
00:37:21
Speaker
So lucky. Well, as I said before, we're so thrilled that you're in a love of the program and you're spoken so highly of and we're so excited to see what you're up to and what you're what you continue to do out in the world. So excellent. Yeah, such a joy to talk to you this afternoon. Thanks for your time. Thank you so much for for including me. This is great.
00:37:48
Speaker
That was the Reverend Caroline McGee, a priest for the Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta and a practicing attorney. Our final conversation is with the Reverend Ingrid McIntyre, a minister within the United Methodist Church and founder of Open Table Nashville. In our time together, she speaks about her experience running multiple nonprofit organizations and their interactions with the government through the course of their work.
00:38:12
Speaker
We are joined today by the Reverend Ingrid McIntyre. Reverend McIntyre is a minister within the United Methodist Church, and she is co-founder of Open Table Nashville, an organization that describes itself as an interfaith homeless outreach nonprofit that disrupts cycles of poverty, journeys with the marginalized, and provides education about issues of homelessness. Ingrid, thank you so much for joining us today. Thanks for having me. It's great to be here. Why don't we start off by having you tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey.
00:38:40
Speaker
Yeah, sure. Our journeys can be long. I will try to keep this a little bit shorter. But what brought me to where I am now, I think I am a PK, so a preacher's kid. I grew up in the church. And so sometimes when that happens,
00:39:01
Speaker
Well, when I went through that process, it made me feel like surely there's another way, right, in some of these situations. Surely there's another way. And so I started out as a youth minister in a church just right outside of Nashville after undergrad, and then realized soon that I needed more tools for my tool belt. I realized that
00:39:26
Speaker
you know, being in a church office and, um, and building relationships, which of course is really important, um, was an important thing, but that also, if I was going to talk about the, the moral and ethical issues that really, um, my faith was propelling me to think about.
00:39:43
Speaker
that I needed some more tools for that toolbox to be able to have those conversations, to be able to be involved in the community in the way that I wanted to. And so after a short break from school, then I went back and got an MTS from Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C.
00:40:03
Speaker
I think I chose Wesley because I was really interested in the intersection of faith and politics and knew that that would put me in a space where I would at least have access to some of those conversations and at least be proximate to some of those very specific conversations. So I went to Wesley and then came home to Nashville and strangely went to work for one of the United Methodist
00:40:32
Speaker
which was not what I went to school to do. And so after two years of being at one of our agencies, I just said, this is not what I went to school to do and really flung myself into the community after that. Really the springboard or the jumping off place was the flood of 2010 that happened in Nashville that really wiped out our community.
00:40:57
Speaker
Um, lots of our community, right? Not even just the, usually when we have natural disasters, it often happens that it's the poorest or the most, um, un-resourced spaces.
00:41:10
Speaker
that get hit, but really in Nashville, it was the entire city. I had just quit my job when the flood happened at one of our agencies and just went straight to the Red Cross shelter where I knew that our friends from the largest homeless encampment in Nashville were being housed after the flood.
00:41:33
Speaker
We'll stop there because that's a long story. But anyway, so that's how I really, the springboard for what really pushed me into the community and doing community work, advocacy, and organizing.
Open Table Nashville's Initiatives
00:41:46
Speaker
Great. Thank you so much for sharing that with us. Yeah, that's great. I wonder, Ingrid, if you could tell us a bit more about your work specifically at Open Table Nashville. I know you're the co-founder. How did you come to be involved in that ministry and how would you describe Open Table Nashville?
00:42:00
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, again, it was the flood. And when the folks that I literally met at the Red Cross shelter, I met three other people at the Red Cross shelter, and we all tended to feel the same way that this was kind of a good opportunity to start building community around asking why we don't have enough housing.
00:42:22
Speaker
Why not just how can we continue to serve food and how can we continue to provide clothing, but also like why do we not have enough affordable housing for people in Nashville? And how can we sort of use this moment to pivot?
00:42:38
Speaker
What we had been sort of just accepting as business as usual to start ramping up the volume on these questions that are more like justice-centered questions than mercy-centered questions. You know, making sure that people knew that mercy is a huge part of us moving forward in a healthy way, but like we've got to be focused on the justice question so that we get there, right? So that there is a there to get to.
00:43:07
Speaker
And so that's really why the four of us sort of decided that sometimes the last thing you need is another nonprofit in your town. But we decided at the time that these questions weren't being asked, right? And so it was something that we felt really called to do.
00:43:26
Speaker
that we really felt called to not only build community with people who had been displaced, but also to really be in solidarity with folks in making sure that their voices were being amplified in the spaces where they needed to be heard the most.
00:43:45
Speaker
So that was sort of the beginning and the why, and why we felt it was really important. We did a lot of, and they still do, certainly, and I consider myself still a part of that, but housed people in permanent housing, also really building collectives of folks who've been living together for a while to try to strategize
00:44:10
Speaker
with them and with our government officials to say, how can we do this together? How can it be an informed process where everyone is hearing each other, where we can all come to the table? Everybody always thinks open table Nashville means food. It does not mean food. It means it's more of a theological concept, of course, which we've had to help explain.
00:44:34
Speaker
but where everybody has a seat at the table, right? And so that was the main push, just recognizing folks' humanity and figuring out what the actual root of homelessness is, which now I'm pretty sure that it's just the will of our politicians.
00:44:55
Speaker
You say that you still consider yourself to be part of Open Table Nashville, but just to back up, you were the executive director for quite some time, is that right? Correct. For 10 years, and I sort of, to all those people who are out there in nonprofit world, I sort of said, 10 years is enough, right? 10 years is enough for me. 10 years is enough for an organization to have one leader, honestly.
00:45:18
Speaker
At the very beginning when we started, I said, I will sign this piece of paper because we were doing our 501c3 paperwork and it was in the middle of the flood. This is when we're doing all this stuff and so things were a little chaotic, but somebody had to sign the paper and I said, I will do that, but it will be for 10 years. I just think that's a healthy
00:45:42
Speaker
healthy turnover. And so really the village at Glencliff, which was the second nonprofit, which is a medical respite for people experiencing homelessness that's now on the property of the church where I serve, that sort of spun out of Open Table Nashville, right? It was a, it spun out of the information and the relationships that we gathered while I was in that space with Open Table Nashville.
00:46:10
Speaker
This was a gap. This was a gap in our services really across the country, but having a medical respite where when people come out of the hospital, they aren't just discharged to a park bench or an encampment down by the river, but that they have a home and a community to help get them
00:46:29
Speaker
into a more stable medical situation so that then we can help them find housing and never go back to the streets again, which is great. Wow. Thank you for sharing that with us. That's really powerful as a model. During our study on law and ministry, we conducted a number of focus groups of ordained Protestant ministers and lay leaders. One of the themes that emerged was a sense of interfacing with the government in ministry, either at a local or state or even national level.
00:46:59
Speaker
And that often took different forms and sometimes could be beneficial, sometimes challenging. And we just wanted to hear from you, in what ways have you interacted with the government in any of your roles, either with Open Table Nashville or even with the village, you know, either through laws or regulations or different programs or partnerships or maybe in different ways entirely.
00:47:20
Speaker
Yeah, where do you want to start? Some of the situations are pretty hairy and some of them are great, just like you said, right? Sometimes it's really helpful and sometimes it's really difficult. I will say with Open Table Nashville, one of the
00:47:36
Speaker
things that we were working on is finding safe encampments for people to be in and to live in that would be undistrupted by law enforcement until we were able to get people into housing.
00:47:52
Speaker
It's a best practice to not disrupt spaces like that, not to say that you don't serve them or that folks don't go in and say, do you need medical care? Do you need food? Do you need all these things? But not to try to play whack-a-mole with a bunch of folks, right? Which is difficult because folks would get moved from one encampment and then they would find another one. And so that just like
00:48:13
Speaker
creates such instability further than what people are already experiencing, of course. And so working with the city to try to make sure that encampments weren't disrupted. And so there were lots of protests around that and lots of meetings with the mayor and lots of
00:48:33
Speaker
organizing with council members to say, like, this is what we feel like best practices. Well, this is what is a best practice, right? And we as a city need to be following best practices. You know, we get better funding from HUD when we follow best practices, et cetera, et cetera. And so really not just like interacting with our government officials from a city standpoint, but also like really and not to be
00:48:59
Speaker
not to sound some kind of way about this, but really trying to educate folks. Because as I have learned and as I'm sure everyone knows, politicians can't be experts on everything, right? And so it's really our job if we want to advocate for something to
00:49:16
Speaker
to really build relationships with council members, with the vice mayor, with the mayor, with whoever makes up your city government, and say, like, here's what we're experiencing firsthand on the ground, right? Here is what best practices say, like, how can we figure that out here in our city?
00:49:37
Speaker
Right? How can we do that? So with Open Table, it was a lot of relationship building. It was a lot of getting folks out and amplifying their voices whose voices had not been heard.
00:49:50
Speaker
who had maybe been heard through secondary sources, but really bringing those voices to the forefront and saying, this is what people experience. And this is not okay for our city, right? Certainly as a person of faith, it's not okay. But I think even as a city, like this is not how we want to treat our citizens.
00:50:12
Speaker
Um, and there is a better way. Um, so that with open table, that was, um, a lot of the discussions that happened, um, with our politicians with the village, it was a whole nother situation. Um, you know, uh, our, my church, the Glencliff United Methodist church is in a neighborhood.
00:50:30
Speaker
And so when we said we were gonna build micro homes in a neighborhood, people freaked out of course. And there was a lot of nimbyism going on. And for those of you who don't know, that's not in my backyard. So we are trying to start, not really, we joke about saying we're gonna have yimbyism and like, yes, in my backyard, right? And so, but anyway, so they, so our neighbors took us all the way to the state Supreme Court. And luckily there is a law that protects
00:51:00
Speaker
faith communities to be able to do what is in their creed, right? And one of the things that is in our creed as United Methodist, also though as Christians, also though as any other faith, right? Any faith, it is part of our creed to protect people that are more vulnerable, right? And so luckily, but obviously also, right, we won the state supreme court case. And so we have now 12 homes,
00:51:30
Speaker
and room for 10 more that we've done the site work for. And it's been lovely to watch. This is one of those situations where it turned out way more beautiful than anybody in the community could have ever imagined. And it was a real good example of how doing things right or doing things well makes everyone happy,
Power of Relationships in Advocacy
00:51:51
Speaker
right? And so I've had lots of folks who were even
00:51:55
Speaker
on the Supreme Court, like people who were taking us to court, who later came to me and said this is the most Christian thing we've ever seen.
00:52:03
Speaker
right? Or we are so sorry, we've been struggling. Jesus has been talking to us and we were wrong and we feel really sorry and how can we support you, right? And so just being able to push through and do the thing that you know is just and right and necessary in a space that isn't always so welcoming. But those are two ways. There's, you know,
00:52:31
Speaker
Lots more, and certainly now that I'm working in some gun reform spaces, it gets a little even more intense than that. But those are some of the ways that we've interacted with our local government for sure.
00:52:48
Speaker
Thank you, Ingrid. You mentioned part of advocacy work involves a large component of both education and relationship building. And I wonder if you could tell us a bit about how your time at Wesley or your theological training influenced this type of your work, or if there's any training that you wish you had as you kind of take on this work today.
00:53:11
Speaker
That's interesting. I feel like I went through seminary ages 0 through 18, just growing up as a PK in a home of a pastor who I really admire. I really admire my dad. I really admire the way that
00:53:29
Speaker
that he is able way more than me to hold grace for people. And he really instilled in me, and this could have been because I was a bit of a problem child probably. And so I hung out with my dad a lot and I got to go and do things with him.
00:53:45
Speaker
that I might not have been doing anyway. But I was with him a lot when he was building relationship and building community and being present with people and being in their homes or being at the soup kitchen or being wherever he was. And so I will say that my love and passion for community started way before Seminary. Seminary certainly
00:54:13
Speaker
it reinforced that and gave me some more tools for building that out. But I'll just say it's a nurture thing for me that I am a community builder and that relationships mean a lot to me and that integrity means a lot to me and authenticity in those relationships. And so, because I've seen what can happen when people are in real relationship with each other and it's transformative, right? And so I have,
00:54:42
Speaker
I'm lucky enough to have this vision of maybe what beloved community looks like. And I'm constantly striving for that. But certainly that's where I get my love for community.
00:54:59
Speaker
And at Wesley, I will say that, you know, that just transferred into my relationships with people in seminary, but also into the community in Washington, DC, right? Like getting involved in the work that's happening on the ground there and with faith communities there.
00:55:18
Speaker
I'm just a huge, I just think if there's relationship, then things are possible, right? That hope isn't snuffed out as long as there's still relationship happening. So that's really important.
00:55:34
Speaker
During seminary or theological education, people usually get a semester or two of contextual education or field education. You had 18 years. What a powerful relationship it sounds like you have. We heard with your father. Luckily, it's good. We don't always agree, but we know that it takes both of us. We are often the same in many ways.
00:56:02
Speaker
And a little bit different. If anybody's familiar with the Enneagram, he's a three, I'm an eight. So like that, that's a lot sometimes. Um, but we know that it takes both of us. And I think that's been helpful even in my, uh, in development of other relationships, right? Knowing that it takes all of us, like it takes the person who can organize
00:56:24
Speaker
the paperwork and the numbers and all that, and it takes the people who can organize the people, and it takes the people who can be loud, and it takes the people who are soft, and it takes, you know, the spectrum of humanity is what it takes to make a change. And so I'm a real believer in everybody having a part in this movement work. Yeah, everybody has a role. Again, there's a seat at the table for anyone and everyone who is willing to be a part of this work.
00:56:53
Speaker
If we can just go back, I'm curious about your experience with the court case. So that's a pretty steep curve into the legal, into the world of the law. And I'm just wondering, you know,
00:57:08
Speaker
Was there anything and any resources in particular that you drew from in that process or or? You know any particular takeaways that you think now having been through it you think would be useful for for ministers to know about the law and and about You know the court system. Yeah, certainly. I mean the thing that And this comes back to relationships, right? I am not
00:57:35
Speaker
The smartest human across the board. I'm just not and I know that and I don't have gifts in all the areas and so again back to relationships Having relationships with people who do you know who do you have specific skills and gifts? So we have a robust group of attorneys who are always willing to like step in and work with us and
00:58:01
Speaker
I feel very thankful that while I was going to therapy 12 times a week, just kidding, but that's what it felt like, it was excruciating, that I was surrounded with a community of people who had the gifts and talents to make what we needed to happen happen.
00:58:20
Speaker
So we had the contractors and we had all the builders and all those folks, but we had the attorneys and we had the community who was supportive. And so I think it's always, to me, better when there's more people involved.
00:58:39
Speaker
It's just more powerful. People are powerful, right? I mean, it's just like elections. Somebody asked me the other day, Ingrid, they have so much money, they're going to win. And I said, do you think money wins? People win. We can organize the heck out of people, right? More people can show up to vote than this person has money.
00:59:00
Speaker
So let's do that. And that's sort of how I felt with the state Supreme Court case. It was like, we have people on our side. We have people who know things on our side. We have people with specific gifts and talents who want to see this happen, who think that this is the right thing to happen. And so any time possible, bringing other people in to me, again, builds the movement.
00:59:26
Speaker
I'm probably more of an organizer than I am a pastor, but I mean, I think that it's true. People power is what changes things. And so, you know, specifically during that time,
00:59:39
Speaker
Of course, like we talk to, you know, continue building relationships with politicians and things like that. But the people who are really going to make things happen is the attorney that says the right thing because they know the law so well. Right. Um, or, um, I mean, a lot of people haven't talked about, talked about, and I'll say the law that I was talking about is called the, um, Ralupa law. Nobody here was like tapping into that, um, at all. And we use that law a lot.
01:00:06
Speaker
for things like the encampments that we were trying to protect, right? We use that law for the village. We use that law anytime that the faith community can be involved and use their land for issues like that, like this. It is not only our responsibility. It is obviously a shared responsibility of our entire community to make sure that there's affordable housing, but
01:00:36
Speaker
But laws like that are helpful to know and utilize. And I would say that was just out of, I found that law just doing research, right? And so then said to the attorney, do this. This is what we've got to use, right? To be able to make this happen. And I think it was the
01:00:57
Speaker
maybe the first time it had been used in, or not the first, it was the second. I think that one of the mosques had to use it in Murfreesboro maybe because they were getting pushed back about building in a certain space. And of course it protects them as well as a faith community to be able to build a worship space. But yeah, so that was really helpful. Obviously having people who know the law well is important.
01:01:24
Speaker
Great. Wow. What a powerful. I remember that controversy in Murfreesboro around the mosque. I think it was around 10 years ago or something like that, if I'm not mistaken. It was, I mean, you know, and so when you live in a state where people think that they can keep people out, then being able to utilize laws that are meant to protect folks is a really helpful thing.
01:01:47
Speaker
And to be able and willing to stand up for that, right? Not everybody's, just because the laws there doesn't mean people are willing to utilize those laws to affect change. And so actually not just knowing the law, but utilizing it to actually affect change. Well, thank you again, Ingrid, for speaking with us this morning. We really appreciate your time and your willingness to share with us your experiences and reflections. Thank you all. Thank you all.
01:02:18
Speaker
Thank you for listening to this special edition of the Interactions Podcast, brought to you by the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University. Special thanks to our guests, Reverend Dr. Ted Smith, Reverend Caroline McGee, and Reverend Ingrid McIntyre. We would also like to thank the Lilly Endowment Incorporated for their generous support of the Center's Law and Ministry study.
01:02:40
Speaker
Our executive producer is Ethan Anthony and our theme music is Elevator Pitch by Shane Ivers from silvermansound.com. To learn more about the Center for the Study of Law and Religion and the Study on Law and Ministry, please visit cslr.law.emory.edu.