A.I., TikTok, and saying “I would prefer not to”

Two technology pieces from last week have stuck with me.

Both were at The New York Times. The first was titled “How TikTok Changed America,” a sort of image/video essay about the platform’s popularity and influence in the U.S. The second was a podcast with Ezra Klein called “How Should I Be Using A.I. Right Now?,” an interview with Ethan Mollick.

To be clear, I skimmed the first and did not listen to the second; I only read Klein’s framing description for the pod (my emphases):

There’s something of a paradox that has defined my experience with artificial intelligence in this particular moment. It’s clear we’re witnessing the advent of a wildly powerful technology, one that could transform the economy and the way we think about art and creativity and the value of human work itself. At the same time, I can’t for the life of me figure out how to use it in my own day-to-day job.

So I wanted to understand what I’m missing and get some tips for how I could incorporate A.I. better into my life right now. And Ethan Mollick is the perfect guide…

This conversation covers the basics, including which chatbot to choose and techniques for how to get the most useful results. But the conversation goes far beyond that, too — to some of the strange, delightful and slightly unnerving ways that A.I. responds to us, and how you’ll get more out of any chatbot if you think of it as a relationship rather than a tool.

These two pieces brought to mind two things I’ve written recently about social media and digital technology more broadly. The first comes from my New Atlantic essay, published two years ago, reviewing Andy Crouch’s book The Life We’re Looking For (my emphases again):

What we need is a recommitment to public argument about purpose, both ours and that of our tools. What we need, further, is a recoupling of our beliefs about the one to our beliefs about the other. What we need, finally, is the resolve to make hard decisions about our technologies. If an invention does not serve the human good, then we should neither sell it nor use it, and we should make a public case against it. If we can’t do that — if we lack the will or fortitude to say, with Bartleby, We would prefer not to — then it is clear that we are no longer makers or users. We are being used and remade.

The other comes late in my Commonweal review, published last summer, of Tara Isabella Burton’s book Self Made:

It may feel to some of us that “everyone,” for example, is on Instagram. Only about 15 percent of the world is on the platform, however. That’s a lot of people. Yet the truth is that most of the world is not on it. The same goes for other social media. Influencer culture may be ubiquitous in the sense that most people between the ages of fifteen and thirty-five are affected by it in some way. But that’s a far cry from digitally mediated self-creation being a universal mandate.

Even for those of us on these apps, moreover, it’s possible to opt out. You don’t have to sell yourself on the internet. You really don’t. I would have liked Burton to show us why the dismal story she tells isn’t deterministic—why, for example, not every young woman is fated to sell her image on OnlyFans sooner or later.

The two relevant phrases from these essay reviews: You really don’t and Bartleby’s I would prefer not to. They are quite simply all you need in your toolkit for responding to new technologies like TikTok and generative A.I.

For example, the TikTok piece states that half of Americans are on the app. That’s a lot! Plenty to justify the NYT treatment. I don’t deny it. But do you know what that claim also means? That half of us aren’t on it. Fifty percent. One out of every two souls. Which is the more relevant statistic, then? Can I get a follow-up NYT essay about the half of us who not only aren’t tempted to download TikTok but actively reject it, can’t stand it, renounce it and all its pomp?

The piece goes further: “Even if you’ve never opened the app, you’ve lived in a culture that exists downstream of what happens there.” Again, I don’t deny it or doubt it. It’s true, to my chagrin. And yet, the power of such a claim is not quite what it seems on first glance.

The downstream-influence of TikTok works primarily if and as one is also or instead an active user of other social media platforms (as well as, perhaps, cable news programs focused on politics and entertainment). I’m told you can’t get on YouTube or Instagram or Twitter or Facebook without encountering “imported” content from TikTok, or “local” content that’s just Meta or Google cribbing on TikTok. But what if, like me, you don’t have an account on any of these platforms? What if you abstain completely from all social media? And what if you don’t watch Fox News or MSNBC or CNN or entertainment shows or reality TV?

I was prepared, reading the NYT piece, to discover all the ways TikTok had invaded my life without my even realizing it. It turns out, though, that I don’t get my news from TikTok, or my movie recommendations, or my cooking recipes, or my fashion advice(!), or my politics, or my Swiftie hits, or my mental health self-diagnoses, or my water bottle, or my nightly entertainment before bed—or anything else. Nothing. Nada. Apparently I have been immune to the fifteen “hottest trends” on TikTok, the way it invaded “all of our lives.”

How? Not because I made it a daily goal to avoid TikTok. Not because I’m a digital ascetic living on a compound free of wireless internet, smart phones, streaming TV, and (most important) Gen Z kiddos. No, it’s because, and more or less only because, I’m not on social media. Turns out it isn’t hard to get away from this stuff. You just don’t download it. You just don’t create an account. If you don’t, you can live as if it doesn’t exist, because for all intents and purposes, for your actual life, it doesn’t.

As I said: You really don’t have to, because you can just say I would prefer not to. All told, that’s enough. It’s adequate all on its own. No one is forcing you to do anything.

Which brings us to Ezra Klein.

Sometimes Klein seems like he genuinely “gets” the scale of the threat, the nature of the digital monstrosity, the power of these devices to shape and rewire our brains and habits and hearts. Yet other times he sounds like just another tech bro who wants to maximize his digital efficiencies, to get ahead of the masses, to get a silicon leg up on the competition, to be as early an adopter as possible. I honestly don’t get it. Does he really believe the hype? Or does he not. At least someone like Tyler Cowen picks a lane. Come join the alarmist train, Ezra! There’s plenty of room! All aboard!

Seriously though, I’m trying to understand the mindset of a person who asks aloud with complete sincerity, “How should I incorporate A.I. into my life ‘better’?” It’s the “should” that gets me. Somehow this is simultaneously a social obligation and a moral duty. Whence the ought? Can someone draw a line for me from this particular “is” to Klein’s technological ought?

In any case, the question presumes at least two things. First, that prior to A.I. my life was somehow lacking. Second, that just because A.I. exists, I need to “find a place for it” in my daily habits.

But why? Why would we ever grant either of these premises?

My life wasn’t lacking anything before ChatGPT made its big splash. I wasn’t feeling an absence that Sam Altman could step in to fill. There is no Google-shaped hole in my heart. As a matter of fact, my life is already full enough: both in the happy sense that I have a fulfilling life and in the stressful sense that I have too much going on in my life. As John Mark Comer has rightly pointed out, the only way to have more of the former is through having less of the latter. Have more by having less; increase happiness by jettisoning junk, filler, hurry, hoarding, much-ness.

Am I really supposed to believe that A.I.—not to mention an A.I. duplicate of myself in order (hold gag reflex) to know myself more deeply (I said hold it!) in ways I couldn’t before—is not just one more damn thing to add to my already too-full life? That it holds the secrets of self-knowledge, maximal efficiency, work flow, work–life balance, relational intimacy, personal creativity, and labor productivity? Like, I’m supposed to type these words one after another and not snort laugh with derision but instead take them seriously, very seriously, pondering how my life was falling short until literally moments ago, when A.I. entered my life?

It goes without saying that, just because the technology exists, I don’t “need” to adopt or incorporate it into my life. There is no technological imperative, and if there were it wouldn’t be categorical. The mere existence of technology is neither self-justifying nor self-recommending. And must I add that devoting endless hours of time, energy, and attention to learning this latest invention, besides stealing those hours from other, infinitely more meaningful pursuits, will undeniably be superseded and almost immediately made redundant by the fact that this invention is nowhere near completion? Even if A.I. were going to improve daily individual human flourishing by a hundredfold, the best thing to do, right now, would be absolutely nothing. Give it another year or ten or fifty and they’ll iron out the kinks, I’m sure of it.

What this way of approaching A.I. has brought home to me is the unalterably religious dimension of technological innovation, and this in two respects. On one side, tech adepts and true believers approach innovation not only as one more glorious step in the march of progress but also as a kind of transcendent or spiritual moment in human growth. Hence the imperative. How should I incorporate this newfangled thing into my already tech-addled life? becomes not just a meaningful question but an urgent, obvious, and existential one.

On the other side, those of us who are members of actual religious traditions approach new technology with, at a minimum, an essentially skeptical eye. More to the point, we do not approach it expecting it to do anything for our actual well-being, in the sense of deep happiness or lasting satisfaction or final fulfillment or ultimate salvation. Technology can and does contribute to human flourishing but only in its earthly, temporal, or penultimate aspects. It has nothing to do with, cannot touch, never can and never will intersect with eternity, with the soul, with the Source and End of all things. Technology is not, in short, a means of communion with God. And for those of us (not all religious people, but many) who believe that God has himself already reached out to us, extending the promise and perhaps a partial taste of final beatitude, then it would never occur to us—it would present as laughably naive, foolish, silly, self-deceived, idolatrous—to suppose that some brand new man-made tool might fix what ails us; might right our wrongs; might make us happy, once and for all.

It’s this that’s at issue in the technological “ought”: the “religion of technology.” It’s why I can’t make heads of tails of stories or interviews like the ones I cited above. We belong to different religions. It may be that there are critical questions one can ask about mine. But at least I admit to belonging to one. And, if I’m being honest, mine has a defensible morality and metaphysics. If I weren’t a Christian, I’d rather be just about anything than a true believing techno-optimist. Of all religions on offer today, it is surely the most self-evidently false.

Three podcasts and two reviews

A bunch of links to share with AAR/SBL and Thanksgiving just around the corner.

First up is three podcasts I went on in the last month:

• On Mere Fidelity I joined the guys to talk about Matthew Lee Anderson’s new book Called Into Questions. I imagined a grilling, but the book is so good it just ended up being a conversation about the topics raised, which are particularly acute for pastors, teachers, parents, and professors. In addition, on Matt’s Substack, I interviewed him with a print Q&A about the book over two editions of the newsletter.

• On Know Why, I spoke with Liberty McArtor about my Christianity Today column on how to keep one’s faith in college as well as the challenges facing all of us, young people especially, by digital technology.

• On Theological Table Talk, I spoke with Keith Stanglin and Todd Hall about my article for the Journal of Christian Studies called “The Fittingness of Holy Orders.” We talked about the academy, the sacraments, catholic tradition, and churches of Christ. (The Zoom conversation includes video on YouTube.)

Further, two more reviews of my books are out:

• In the Journal of Analytic Theology, Caleb Lindgren reviews The Church’s Book. An odd fit for the journal, he admits, but he finds some points of contact with analytic thought. The review is quite positive while also wanting more from the book’s arguments and proposals, if not from me then from analytic theologians who might extend them.

• In the newest issue of the Stone-Campbell Journal, Rob O’Lynn also reviews The Church’s Book. I don’t yet have a link to an online version of the review; I’ll post it once I do. O’Lynn is mixed on the value of the book, tilting more negative than positive; or at least, positive at the level of the parts but underwhelmed by the whole.

Finally, be on the lookout for these:

• An essay on theological education in Sapientia.

• A review of Matthew Thiessen’s A Jewish Paul in Commonweal.

• An essay on Miroslav Volf and Ryan McAnnally-Linz’s book The Home of God in a symposium on Syndicate.

• An essay on the late Albert Borgmann … somewhere.

• An article on evangelicalism, catholicity, and the future of churches of Christ in Restoration Quarterly.

• A review of David Kelsey’s latest (and final) book Human Anguish and God’s Power in the Stone-Campbell Journal—published more than a year ago without my realizing it!

More stuff in the works, whether already written or to be written soon, all due out sometime in the new year. I’ll be in San Antonio this weekend for the annual SBL/AAR conference; no papers, but I will be chairing one of the “Theological Interpretation” sessions: a panel responding to Amy Peeler’s book Women and the Gender of God. Should be good fun. Perhaps I’ll see some of y’all there.

Two reviews, a pod, and a Pole

A roundup of links…

My colleague and friend David Kneip interviewed me on the podcast Live From the Siburt Institute. We talk a lot about Christian tradition and digital technology. A bit less buttoned up than I usually am on pods, I think.

In the latest issue of Interpretation, Joshua E. Leim reviews The Doctrine of Scripture. He’s very generous. Here’s the last paragraph:

This is undoubtedly an excellent book, from which anyone hoping to reflect carefully—indeed devotionally—on the gift of Scripture will profit greatly. That is not to say that I agreed with everything in it. It seems to me, for example, that East leaves too little space for the disruptive potential of Scripture, i.e., its ability to stand over the church and rebuke it. Or, as another example, while East certainly does not reject tout court modern academic approaches to Scripture, he tends to lump together “biblical scholars” and their aims (e.g., pp. 183, 135, 137 n. 62) as problematic. Those concerns notwithstanding, this is a beautifully written, compelling theological articulation of the doctrine of Christian Scripture.

Likewise, in the latest issue of The Expository Times, Gregory Vall reviews The Church’s Book. He too is kind! Last paragraph:

This volume is a work of constructive criticism, and Brad East has mastered the genre. His critiques do not result in the denigration of the theological systems he engages. Rather, they disclose what is of true and lasting value in each of them. East’s own theological perspective proves to be broadly and deeply catholic and genuinely ecumenical. His writing is clear, precise, and refreshingly free of baroque diction and pretentious rhetoric.

Finally, Sławomir Zatwardnicki, who is part of the Pontifical Faculty of Theology in Wrocław, Poland, has taken an interest in my work. He has written not one but two articles engaging The Doctrine of Scripture, albeit in Polish—not a tongue in which I have any facility. Nevertheless, I wanted to acknowledge this gift with gratitude as well as offer links for anyone who does know Polish:

• ‘Brada Easta doktryna Pisma Świętego,’ in Biblica et Patristica Thoruniensia

• ‘Protestant krytycznie o „sola Scriptura”. Brada Easta argumenty przeciw reformacyjnemu pryncypium,’ in Teologia w Polsce

Young Christians (not) reading, 2

I received some really useful feedback in response to my previous post about the reading habits, such as they are, of high school and college Christians today. By way of reminder, the group I’m thinking about consists of (a) Christians who are (b) spiritually committed and (c) intellectually serious (d) between the ages of 15 and 25. In other words, in terms of GPA or intelligence or aptitude or career prospects, the top 5-10% Christian students in high school and college. Future professionals, even elites, who are likely to pursue graduate degrees in top-100 schools followed by jobs in law, medicine, journalism, the arts, academia, and politics. What are they reading right now—if anything?

(I trust my qualifiers and modifiers ensure in advance that I’m not equating spiritual maturity with intellectual aptitude, on one hand, or intellectual aptitude with careerist elitism, on the other.)

Here are some responses I received as well as a bunch of further reflections on my part.

1. One comment across the board: None of these kids are reading anything, whether they are cream of the crop or nothing of the kind. And they’re certainly not reading bona fide theology or intellectually demanding spiritual writing. All of them, including the smartest and most ambitious, are online, all the time, full stop. What “content” they get is found there: podcasts, videos, bloggers, and influencers, plus pastors with a “brand” and an extensive online presence (which, these days, amount to the same thing). To be fair, some of these online sources aren’t half bad. Some are substantive. Some have expertise or credentials or wide learning (if, often, of the autodidact sort). But to whatever extent any of these kids are acquiring knowledge, it’s not literate knowledge. It’s mediated by the internet, not by books.

2. If someone in this age range is reading a living Christian author, then I was right to think of John Mark Comer. A few more names mentioned: David Platt, Francis Chan, Dane Ortlund, Timothy Keller. I also had The Gospel Coalition mentioned as a group of authors read by some of these folks. In terms of dead authors, in addition to what I called “the usual suspects” (Lewis, Chesterton, Bonhoeffer, et al), I also heard Eugene Peterson, Dallas Willard, and Henri Nouwen. Which makes sense, since all of them have passed in recent memory, and professors as well as youth pastors would be likely to recommend their work. (I’m going to go ahead and assume John Piper is among those names, too, though he is still with us.)

3. An addendum: Some young believers are reading books, but the books they’re reading are mostly fiction. Typically YA fare; sometimes older stuff, like Tolkien or Jane Austen; occasionally scattered past or present highbrow fiction like Donna Tartt or Cormac McCarthy or Susanna Clarke. But still, not a lot of fiction reading overall, and the majority is page-turning lowbrow stuff, with occasional English-major nerdballs (hello) opting for the top-rack vintage.

4. A second addendum: It isn’t clear to me how to count or to contextualize kids who are home-schooled or taught in classical Christian academies. What percentage of the total student population are they? And what percentage of this small sub-population is being taught Homer and Virgil and Saint Augustine and Calvin and so on? Or, if we’re thinking of living authors, which if any of them are they reading? I simply have no idea what the answer is to any of these questions. Nor do I know what the difference is between such students being assigned these texts and their actual personal reading habits outside of class.

5. Back to the brief list of living authors above: Comer, Platt, Chan, Ortlund, Keller, et al. The question arises: Are young Christians who report these names in fact reading their books? Or are they “digesting” their message via sermons, podcasts, and video recordings available on the internet? The same goes for megachurch pastors with an online audience, like Jonathan Pokluda, who preaches outside of Waco; or Andy Stanley in Atlanta, or Matt Chandler in Dallas. There’s a lot of daylight between reading an author’s books and knowing the basic gist of a public figure.

6. To be even more granular: If a young Christian says that she has read Comer’s latest book, what is likeliest? That she used her eyes to scan a codex whose pages she turned with her hands? or that she read it on an e-reader/tablet? or that she listened to the audio version? After all, Comer—like other popular nonfiction authors today—reads his books himself for the audio edition. And since he’s a preacher for a living, it’s very effective, not to mention personalizing; which is part of the appeal for so many young people today.

7. In a word, is it true to say that even the readers among young believers today are often not “reading” in the classical manner many of us presuppose? So that, whether it’s a podcast or a TikTok or an IG Reel or a YouTube channel or a “book,” the manner of reception/intake/ingestion is more or less the same? So that “reading” names not an alternative mode of acquiring knowledge or engaging a source but simply a difference in type of source? In which case, it seems to me, young people formed in this way will not, would not, think of “books” as different in kind from other social media that make for their daily digital diet, but merely a difference in degree. Books being one point on a spectrum that includes pods, videos, and the like.

8. So much for technologies of knowledge production and consumption. Another question: What counts as a “serious” Christian author? That was part of my original question, recall. Not just intellectually serious young Christian readers, but serious Christian books by serious Christian authors. Not fluff. Not spiritual candy bars. Not the ghost-written memoirs of influencers. Not, in short, the “inspirational” shelf at Barnes & Noble. If one-half of the presenting question of the original post concerned a certain type of young Christian reader, the other half concerns a certain type of Christian author. Here’s what I have in mind, at least. The author doesn’t have to meet a credentials requirement; doesn’t have to have a doctorate. Nor does he have to write in an academic, jargon-laden, or impenetrable style. That would defeat the point. To be popular, you have to be readable. And “being popular” can’t be a defeater here, or else no one, however rich or good in substance, could ever sell books: they’d be disqualified by their own success.

As I’ve said, Lewis and Chesterton are the gold standard. Other names that come to mind from the twentieth century (beyond Bonhoeffer, Nouwen, Peterson, and Willard) include Karl Barth, Dorothy Sayers, Francis Schaeffer, Os Guinness, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Madeleine L’Engle, John Stott, J. I. Packer, Robert Farrar Capon, Frederick Buechner, Wendell Berry, Stanley Hauerwas, and Marilynne Robinson. That’s a very short list; it could be doubled or tripled quickly. As it stands, what do the names on it have in common?

Here’s how I’d put it. Each author’s writing draws from a rich, clear, and deep reservoir of knowledge and wisdom, a reservoir that funds their work but does not overwhelm it. Put differently, what a normie reader encounters is the tip of the iceberg. If that’s all she can handle, so be it. But to anyone in the know, it’s as clear as day that there’s a mountain of ice beneath the surface.

Furthermore, one of the consistent effects of reading any of these authors is not only sticking with them but moving beyond them into the vast tradition that so evidently informs their writing. This could be the Thomistic tradition, or the patristic, or the Homeric, or the Antiochene, or the Kantian, or the Reformed, or whatever—but what the author offers the reader is so beautiful that the reader wants more of whatever it is. And so she moves from Piper to Edwards to Calvin to Augustine in the course of weeks, months, and years. From there, who knows what will be next?

That is the kind of book, the sort of author, I have in mind. My original interlocutor was asking about such work in the present tense. Who fits the bill? And who are young people reading? I’m willing to say that Keller fits the bill. Comer does too, in my judgment, though that is a status he graduated into with his last two books. His earlier work was far too primitivist-evangelical, far too dismissive of tradition, to qualify. But to his credit, he has clearly read himself into the tradition and now invites his readers to do the same.

I can certainly name others, like Tish Harrison Warren, who are doing the work and who are selling books. But are they having a widespread discernible influence across a vast slice of 15-25-year olds today? It’s probably too early to tell.

9. Let me think about my own trajectory for a moment. Here are authors whose books I read cover-to-cover across three different age ranges:

• 15-18: Lewis, Chesterton, Bonhoeffer, Kierkegaard, Tolkien

• 18-22: Lee Camp, Douglas John Hall, Richard Foster, Nouwen, John Howard Yoder, Hauerwas, Berry, Walter Brueggemann, N. T. Wright, Ben Witherington

• 22-25: William Cavanaugh, Terry Eagleton, Robert Bellah, Augustine, Charles Taylor, Barth, Robert Jenson, John Webster, Christopher Hitchens, Michael Walzer, Kathryn Tanner

These aren’t all the authors I was reading at these ages, but rather the kinds of names I was introduced to that made an impact on me—so much so that I remember, in most cases, the first book I read by each, and when and where I was, and what my first impression of them was.

I’m sure I’m leaving off some important names. But the list is representative. I was a precocious, brainy young Christian who loved talking about God and reading the Bible, and these were the authors that youth ministers, mentors, and professors put in my hands. Not a bad list! Pretty much all living authors, or from the previous century, so not a lot of historical or cultural diversity on offer. But substantive, provocative, stimulating, and accessible nonetheless. The kinds of authors who might change your life. The kind who might convert you, or de-convert you. Who might shadow you for years to come.

And so, once again, the question is: Is the 2023 version of me (a) reading at all and, if so, (b) which authors, living or dead, is he reading? which is he being poked and prodded by? which stimulated and provoked by? Inquiring minds want to know!

10. This exercise has made me take a second look at my own teaching. Which authors do I assign? If you are a student who enrolls in my class, who will you read? A rough summary off the top of my head:

• Dead: Barth, Saint Gregory of Nazianzus, Saint Athanasius, Saint Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin, Martin Luther, Saint Augustine, Saint Oscar Romero, Pope St. John Paul II, Pope Paul VI, Henri Nouwen, James Cone, Gerhard Lohfink, Dietrich Bonhoeffer

• Alive: Tish Harrison Warren, James K. A. Smith, Thomas Joseph White, N. T. Wright, Beth Felker Jones, Martin Mosebach, Tara Isabella Burton, Ross Douthat, Andy Crouch, Andrew Davison, Andrew Wilson, Peter Leithart, Jemar Tisby, Victor Lee Austin, Michael Banner, James Mumford

Those are just authors of books I’ve assigned (and do assign). The list would be far larger if I included authors of chapters and articles and online essays. In any case, I’m pretty happy with this list, granting that I teach upper-level gen-ed elective courses to undergraduate students who have never taken theology before.

11. What lessons do I draw from all of the above? First, that people like me have a lot of power and influence and therefore enormous responsibility toward the young people who enter our classrooms. I cannot control whether my students fall in love with the books I assign them. But if I choose wisely, I make it far more likely that they might fall in love. That might in turn set off a chain reaction of reading and learning that lasts a lifetime.

12. Second lesson: Don’t assign “textbooks.” That is, don’t assign purely academic or fake authors. Don’t assign books dumbed down for teenagers. Avoid books that do not look like any sane person would ever cozy up with them in a comfy chair and read leisurely for a whole afternoon. Instead, assign books whose authors are known for befriending their readers. Assign authors who have fanatical followings. Assign authors who have the power to convert readers to their cause. Assign poets and rhetors and masters of the word. Assign stylish writing. Assign passionate writing, writing with stakes. Assign texts with teeth. Don’t be surprised when they bite students. That’s the point.

13. Third, the express aim of Christian liberal arts education and certainly of every humanities class within such institutions ought to be for students to learn to read, thence to learn to love to read, thence to learn to desire to be (that is, to become) a lifelong reader. Every assignment should be measured by whether it conduces to this end. If it does not, it should be scrapped.

14. It follows, fourth, that professors should shy away from assigning online content, whether that be links, videos, podcasts, or even texts on e-readers. That’s not quite an outright ban, but it is a strong nudge against the inclination. Give your students books: physical books they can hold in their hands. Reading a book is an activity different from scrolling a website, watching a video, or listening to a podcast. Young people already know how to do those things. They do not know how to sit still for ninety minutes without a screen in sight, in utter silence, and turn pages, lost in a book, for pure pleasure or simple edification. They have to be taught how to do that. And it takes time. What better time than college?

15. All this applies twice-over for seminaries. What is a pastor who cannot read? The principal job of a pastor, alongside administering the sacraments, is to teach and preach God’s word, which means to interpret the scriptures for God’s people. You cannot interpret without reading, which means you cannot teach and preach without being able to read. Are we raising a generation of illiterate ministers? Is the time already upon us? Are our seminaries aiding and abetting this process, or actively opposing and redirecting it?

16. If professors have some measure of influence, youth pastors (in person) and pastors with a public platform (online) have much greater influence. What we need, then, is for pastors to see it as part of their job description to find ways to encourage and induce literacy in the young people at their churches and, further, to suggest authors and books that are more than candy bars and happy meals, spiritually speaking. For this to happen—allow me to repeat myself—pastors must themselves be readers. They must be voracious bookworms who understand that their vocation necessarily and essentially entails wide and deep and sustained reading. Their churches (above all their elders and vestries and bishops) must understand this, too. If you walk into a pastor’s office and he is reading, he is doing his job. If you never see him reading, something’s amiss. The same is true, by the way, if you do see him reading, but he’s only ever reading a book written in the last five years.

17. Returning to the academy, what happens in the classroom is not all that happens on a college campus. Much, perhaps most, learning happens elsewhere. To be sure, it happens in library stacks and dorm rooms and coffee shops and Bible studies. But it also happens at Christian study centers. The importance of these cannot be overstated. Their presence on public and non-religious campuses is a refuge and a haven for young believers. They can’t be only that, however. They have to be the kind of place that fosters learning, reflection, discussion, and—yes—reading. Reading groups on the church fathers, or the magisterial reformers, or the Lutheran scholastics, or the ecumenical councils: these should be the bread and butter of Christian study centers. Hubs of vibrant intellectual life woven into and inseparable from the spiritual.

18. I’ll go one step further (borrowing the tongue-in-cheek suggestion from a friend): What we need is Christian study centers on Christian college campuses. Sad to say, far too many Christian universities today have bought into credentialing, gate-keeping, and careerism. They do not exist to further the Christian vision of the liberal arts. They exist to stay alive by selling students a product that will in turn secure them a job. None of these things is bad in themselves—enduring institutions, diplomas, gainful employment—but they are not the reason why Christian higher education exists. The presence of Christian study centers on Christian campuses would signal a commitment to the telos of such institutions by carving out space for the kinds of activity that students and professors are, lamentably, sometimes kept from devoting themselves to within the classroom itself. Perhaps this could be done explicitly on some campuses, whereas on others you would have to do it on the sly. Either way, it’s a worthy endeavor.

19. Let me close on two notes, one negative and one positive. The negative: As I have written about before, we have entered a time of double literacy loss in the church. Christians, especially the young, are at once biblically illiterate and literally illiterate. They do not read or know the Bible, and this is of a piece with their larger habits, for they do not read anything much at all. That is a fact. It would be foolish to deny it and naive to pretend it will change in some seismic shift in the span of a few years.

The period in which we find ourselves, then, is a sort of return to premodern times: Granting a kind of minimal mass literacy, in terms of widespread active reading habits, there is now (or will soon be) a very small minority of readers—and everyone else. What will this mean for the church? For daily spirituality and personal devotion? For catechesis, Sunday school, and preaching? For lay and voluntary leaders in the church? For ordained ministers themselves? We shall see.

20. I am biased, obviously, in favor of literacy and habits of reading. I want my students to be readers. I want pastors to be readers. I want more, not less, reading; and better, not worse, reading. But not everyone is meant to be a reader. Not everyone should major in English. Not everyone’s evenings are best spent with Proust in the French and a glass of wine. God forgive me for implying so, if I have.

Here’s the upshot. If young people (and, as they age, all people) are going to learn about the Christian faith through means other than reading, and for the time being those means will largely be mediated by the internet, then what we need is (a) high-quality content (b) accessible to normies (c) funded by a reservoir of knowledge rooted in the great tradition, together with (d) ease of access and widespread knowledge of how to get it. We need, in other words, networks of writers, pastors, teachers, scholars, speakers, podcasters, and others who have resources, audiences, support, technology, and platforms by which and through which to communicate the gospel, build up God’s people, and educate the faithful in ways the latter can access and understand, with content we would call “meat,” not “milk.”

I know one such endeavor. There are others. I don’t want to give up on literacy. I never will. But we can walk and chew gum at the same time. Time and past time to get moving on these projects. I’m entirely in favor of them, so long as we do not see them as a substitute but instead as a supplement to the habits of reading they thereby encourage rather than block. What we need, though, is the right people, adequately resourced, finding the young, hungry and seeking Christ and open to learning as they are. If this is the way to reach them, and it can be done well, count me in.

I’m in First Things + on a podcast

An essay of mine called “Theology in Division” is in the new issue of First Things. Here’s a link. I’ve had something like it half-written in the back of my mind for the last five years. I’m glad for it to be in print finally. I’m also glad for it to honor both Robert Jenson and Joseph Ratzinger, two theologians whose legacy I treasure who have now gone on to their reward.

I’m also on the latest episode of a new podcast called The Great Tradition. We recorded the interview back in December. It’s about the Bible. This time I’ve got a good mic, so I don’t sound like I’ve yelling through feedback the whole time.

After declining invitations to appear on podcasts for years, I’ve now been on 5-10 of them over the last 12+ months. My line used to be “Friends don’t let friends go on podcasts before tenure.” I have tenure now, so I guess I’m covered. In any case, I’ve come to enjoy the interviews. This one was fun, and I think we found a way to cover all the main theological issues raised by my two books on Scripture.

I’m on the HOCT podcast

A couple months back Chad Kim and I had a lovely conversation about The Church’s Book for his podcast A History of Christian Theology. The episode just went up this morning. Here’s the link to the pod’s website, but you can also find it on Spotify, iTunes, etc.

Two apologies:

First, my audio is awful. I used the same professional mic (on loan from the library) that I always do, but for whatever reason, the sound is grating. Alas.

Second, in the interview I somehow attribute two very famous quotes to Tertullian that actually come from St. Cyprian, a fact I knew then and know now but which my mind misplaced in real time. Or maybe I’m just keeping you on your toes. Who can say?

I’m on the Crackers & Grape Juice podcast

Back in May Jason Micheli was kind enough to have me on the Crackers & Grape Juice podcast to talk about The Church’s Book. I’ve known about the C&GJ pod since they had Robert Jenson on in 2017, only months before he died. Jason believes in avoiding the Q&A format of typical interviews and just having a conversation, and that’s just what we did; it was a blast. I hope y’all enjoy.

One note: If you listen to the end—and maybe don’t—I was clearly unprepared for his rendition of James Lipton’s famous questionnaire (which, as a onetime faithful viewer of The Actors’ Studio, I appreciated!). My answers for favorite and least favorite word are, to put it kindly, asinine. Feel free to roll your eyes. Then forgive me. From now on I’ll know what to say. If I’m ever on again, I’ll be locked and loaded with answers that appear off the cuff but that are actually carefully prepared and scripted.

It’s a vice, hating to sound dumb. The Spirit is ever at work, one minor humiliation at a time.

I’m on another podcast!

When it rains, it pours.

Matthew Dagher-Margosian reached out to me after reading my essay last year in The Point on the “conservative radicalism” of Wendell Berry. Matthew is an activist on the Left and committed to various forms of advocacy, especially related to the environment. He was intrigued by my defense of Berry against George Scialabba’s socialist criticism as well as the role of Christian faith in Berry’s (and my) approach to politics, culture, and social change. So he invited me on his podcast.

I confess to feeling a bit out of my element in this conversation, though I hope I acquitted myself well enough. Matthew was gracious both in having someone like me on and in giving me a wide berth in which to share reflections from another perspective.

You can listen to the interview on Spotify or Apple. I’ll have at least one more link soon to another podcast interview I did, about my new book. Though I’m not much of a listener anymore, I do appreciate the opportunity to share about my work and to talk to interesting people I’d never otherwise meet or converse with.

I’m on Mere Fidelity

Did I say quit podcasts? I meant all of them except one.

I’m on the latest episode of Mere Fidelity, talking about my book The Doctrine of Scripture and, well, the doctrine of Scripture. (Links: Google, Spotify, Apple, Soundcloud.) It was a pleasure to chat with Derek and Alastair and (surprise!) Timothy. Matt had to bail last minute. I can only assume he was nervous.

No joke, it was an honor to be on. For the last decade, I have lived by the mantra, “No podcasts before tenure.” I’ve turned down every invitation. In 2020–21 I participated in three podcasts as a member of The Liberating Arts, the first two as the interviewer (of Alan Noble and Jon Baskin, respectively) and the third as interviewee, speaking on behalf of the project (this was 11 months ago, but the podcast just posted this week, as it happens). In other words, this experience with Mere Fi was for all intents and purposes my first true podcast experience, in full and on the receiving end.

It was fun! I hope I didn’t flub too many answers. I tend to speak in winding paragraphs, not in discrete and manageable sentences. Besides, it’s hard to compete with Alastair’s erudition—and that accent!

Check it out. And the Patreon, where there’s a +1 segment. Thanks again to the Mere Fi crew. I give all of you dear readers a big glorious exception to go and listen to them. They’ve got the best theology pod around. What a gift to be included on the fun.

Six months without podcasts

Last September I wrote a half-serious, half-tongue-in-cheek post called “Quit Podcasts.” There I followed my friend Matt Anderson’s recommendation to “Quit Netflix” with the even more unpopular suggestion to quit listening to podcasts. As I say in the post, the suggestion was two-thirds troll, one-third sincere. That is, I was doing some public teasing, poking the bear of everyone’s absolutely earnest obsession with listening to The Best Podcasts all day every day. Ten years ago, in a group of twentysomethings, the conversation would eventually turn to what everyone was watching. These days, in a group of thirtysomethings, the conversation inexorably turns to podcasts. So yes, I was having a bit of fun.

But not only fun. After 14 years of listening to podcasts on a more or less daily basis, I was ready for something new. Earlier in the year I’d begun listening to audiobooks in earnest, and in September I decided to give up podcasts for audiobooks for good—or at least, for a while, to see how I liked it. Going back and forth between audiobooks and podcasts had been fine, but when the decision is between a healthy meal and a candy bar, you’re usually going to opt for the candy bar. So I cut out the treats and opted for some real food.

That was six months ago. How’s the experiment gone? As well as I could have hoped for. Better, in fact. I haven’t missed podcasts once, and it’s been nothing but a pleasure making time for more books in my life.

Now, before I say why, I suppose the disclaimer is necessary: Am I pronouncing from on high that no one should listen to podcasts, or that all podcasts are merely candy bars, or some such thing? No. But: If you relate to my experience with podcasts, and you’re wondering whether you might like a change, then I do commend giving them up. To paraphrase Don Draper, it will shock you how much you won’t miss them, almost like you never listened to them in the first place.

So why has it been so lovely, life sans pods? Let me count the ways.

1. More books. In the last 12 months I listened to two dozen works of fiction and nonfiction by C. S. Lewis and G. K. Chesterton alone. Apart from the delight of reading such wonderful classics again, what do you think is more enriching for my ears and mind? Literally any podcast produced today? Or Lewis/Chesterton? The question answers itself.

2. Not just “more” books, but books I wouldn’t otherwise have made the time to read. I listened to Fahrenheit 451, for example. I hadn’t read it since middle school. I find that I can’t do lengthy, complex, new fiction on audio, but if it’s a simple story, or on the shorter side, or one whose basic thrust I already understand, it goes down well. I’ve been in a dystopian mood lately, and felt like revisiting Bradbury, Orwell, Huxley, et al. But with a busy semester, sick kids, long evenings, finding snatches of time in which to get a novel in can be difficult. But I always have to clean the house and do the dishes. Hey presto! Done and done. Many birds with one stone.

3. Though I do subscribe to Audible (for a number of reasons), I also use Libby, which is a nice way to read/listen to new books without buying them. That’s what I did with Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks—another book that works well on audio. I’ve never been much of a local library patron, except for using university libraries for academic books. This is one way to patronize my town’s library system while avoiding spending money I don’t have on books I may not read anytime soon.

4. I relate to Tyler Cowen’s self-description as an “infogore.” Ever since I was young I have wanted to be “in the know.” I want to be up to date. I want to have read and seen and heard all the things. I want to be able to remark intelligently on that op-ed or that Twitter thread or that streaming show or that podcast. Or, as it happens, that unprovoked war in eastern Europe. But it turns out that Rolf Dobelli is right. I don’t need to know any of that. I don’t need to be “in the know” at all. Seven-tenths is evanescent. Two-tenths is immaterial to my life. One-tenth I’ll get around to knowing at some point, though even then I will, like everyone else, overestimate its urgency.

That’s what podcasts represent to me: either junk food entertainment or substantive commentary on current events. To the extent that that is what podcasts are, I am a better person—a less anxious, more contemplative, more thoughtful, less showy—for having given them up.

Now, does this description apply to every podcast? No. And yet: Do even the “serious” podcasts function in this way more often than we might want to admit? Yes.

In any case, becoming “news-resilient,” to use Burkeman’s phrase, has been one of the best decisions I’ve made in a long time. My daily life is not determined by headlines—print, digital, or aural. Nor do I know what the editors at The Ringer thought of The Batman, or what Ezra Klein thinks of Ukraine, or what the editors at National Review think of Ukraine. The truth is, I don’t need to know. Justin E. H. Smith and Paul Kingsnorth are right: the number of people who couldn’t locate Ukraine on a map six weeks ago who are now Ukraine-ophiles with strong opinions about no-fly zones and oil sanctions would be funny, if the phenomenon of which they are a part weren’t so dangerous.

I don’t have an opinion about Ukraine, except that Putin was wrong to invade, is unjust for having done so, and should stop immediately. Besides praying for the victims and refugees and for an immediate cessation to hostilities, there is nothing else I can do—and I shouldn’t pretend otherwise. That isn’t a catchall prohibition, as though others should not take the time, slowly, to learn about the people of Ukraine, Soviet and Russian history, etc., etc. Anyone who does that is spending their time wisely.

But podcasts ain’t gonna cut it. Even the most sober ones amount to little more than propaganda. And we should all avoid that like the plague, doubly so in wartime.

The same goes for Twitter. But then, I quit that last week, too. Are you sensing a theme? Podcasts aren’t social media, but they aren’t not social media, either. And the best thing to do with all of it is simple.

Sign off.

Quit podcasts

“Quit Netflix.”

Matt Anderson has made that phrase something of a personal slogan. Among the many controversial things he’s written—he’s a controversialist, after all—it may be the most controversial. We like our shows in the age of Peak TV. And what he wants to do is take them away.

Okay, not exactly. But he thinks you—all of us—would be better off if we canceled our Netflix subscriptions. For the obvious reasons: Netflix is a candy bar, a sedative, a numbing device by which we pass the time by doing nothing especially worthwhile at all. It turns out that’s true not only of Netflix but of the so-called Golden Age of TV as a whole. It’s not that there are no good TV shows. It’s that, in almost every circumstance, there are dozens of better things you could be doing with your time. (You might be inclined to resist this claim, but in your heart you know it’s inarguable.) Add to that the fact that watching Prestige TV has become, in the last dozen years, a vaguely moralized social obligation for a certain subset of upper-middle class white-collar professionals, and perhaps Matt is right that Christians not only may but should quit Netflix.

Point taken. Now allow me to swap out a different activity for your quitting consideration.

Podcasts.

Podcasts, as you well know, are the new Prestige TV. They’re ubiquitous. Not only does everyone have a favorite podcast. Everyone has a podcast, i.e., hosts one of their own. Or is starting one. Or is planning to. Or has an idea for one. They just need to get the equipment and line up some guests . . .

I live and work right next to a college campus. If you see someone walking on campus and that person is under 40 and alone, almost certainly she has air pods in her ears, and chances are those air pods are playing a podcast. (Maybe music. Maybe.) What is the podcast? Who knows? There are literally millions today, on every topic under the sun. “Have you listened to [X] podcast?” is the new “Have you seen the latest episode of [X]?” Just last month our pediatrician asked me, in the middle of a check-up for one of our kids, given my job, whether I was listening to the Mars Hill podcast. Alas, I had to say no.

Now, this post is two-thirds troll, one-third sincere. I’ve been listening to podcasts for nearly 15 years. My first was Bill Simmons’ old pod for ESPN, whose first episode dropped while I was living in an apartment in Tomsk, Russia, early in the summer of 2007. I’ve been listening to Simmons off and on ever since. My podroll has increased as I’ve aged, and some of my typical listens are among the usual suspects: Ezra Klein, The Argument, Zach Lowe, The Watch, The Rewatchables, Know Your Enemy, LR&C, Tyler Cowen, Mere Fidelity, The Editors, a few others here and there. Washing the dishes or cleaning the house, it’s a pleasure to listen to these folks talk about sports and entertainment and news and politics and theology. It’s background noise, their voices become like those of friends, and occasionally you even learn things.

So unlike the scourge of Prestige TV—which is little more than a Trojan horse for reinforcing the single greatest collective habitual addiction besetting our society for nearly a century—podcasts aren’t All Bad, nor are their benefits mainly a function of rationalization and self-justification. I’m not worried about them in the same way.

Having said that. Let me suggest a few reasons why you ought to be a little more skeptical of them. So as to decrease your podcasting, and maybe even to quit it.

First, podcasts are filler. They’re aural wallpaper. They’re something to have on in the background while you do something else, something that requires your actual focus and attention. If that’s true, can they really be that substantial? Aren’t they, as often as not, little more than snack food for the ears?

Second, if you really want to listen to something (say, on a road trip or a long walk or while working out), why not listen to an audiobook? Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the book will be worth your time—a four-course meal—in a way the Cheetos-posing-as-Michelin-starred-podcast will not. You could buy audiobooks or sign up for Audible, as a way to patronize authors, or you could use Overdrive or Libby. You have more or less every great work of literature and prose in the English language available to listen to for free; sometimes the work was composed with the express purpose of hearing it read aloud, rather than reading words on a page. Why not give it a try?

Third, those first two points suppose it’s not a problem, us walking around incessantly filling our ears with the voices of others, thus blocking out the noises—and silences—of the real world. Isn’t it a problem, though, this anxious need to fill even the smallest of snatches of time with meaningful noise, lest we be oppressed by the stillness and quietness (or, if you’re in a big city, the parading loudness) of life? Or perhaps we feel anxious to Do Something Productive with our time: If our attention can manage it, surely we Ought To Be Learning/Listening/Thinking? Nonsense. If to cook is to pray, so is every other daily “mindless” habitual activity that doesn’t demand the totality of our attention. Such activity may, in fact, permit our attention to be at ease, or to meditate on other matters, or to examine our days, or to wander as it pleases. Or, as the case may be, to choke on emotions we’d rather not address, indeed would rather numb and sedate and repress through unremitting distraction. Perhaps podcasts are a kind of noise pollution but on an individual level, self-chosen rather than imposed from without. We just have to refuse the urge to put the pods in and press play.

Fourth, podcasts almost invariably trade on the new, the latest, the exclusive-breaking-this-just-in-ness of our forgetful presentist age. In this they’re analogous to Twitter: an infinite scroll, not for the eyes, but for the ears. Doubtless some people listen to podcasts while scrolling Twitter. (The horror!) The podcasts play on, world without end, one blending into another, until you forget where one begins and one ends. Of all the podcasts you’ve ever listened to—and I’ve surely listened to thousands—how many discrete episodes can you point to, from memory, and say, “That one, right there, was significant, a meaningful and substantive and life-giving episode”? I’m not saying you couldn’t pick out a few. I’m suggesting the batting average will be very low. Again, like remembering individual tweets. That’s why podcasts are so disposable. The moment they lose their immediate relevance, they are cast aside into the dustbin of history. It’s what makes writers who become podcasters so sad. Books and essays and columns stand the test of time. Pods do not. Bill Simmons, whom I referenced earlier, stopped writing five or six years ago. He likes to say his fingers stopped working. The truth is, a combination of market inefficiency plus the convenience of podcasting meant taking the time to draft and revise and draft and revise, under an editor’s watchful eye, was less convenient and more time-demanding than hopping onto a podcast seconds after a game ended—plus advertisers are willing to pay for that in a way they don’t for individual columns. So a writer who came onto the scene and made a name for himself because of his writing simply ceased to practice his craft. That’s something to lament. Beyond that individual case, though, it’s a parable for our time. And Simmons is someone with an audience in the millions. Yet his thousands upon thousands of podcasts from the last decade will never be listened to a second time, now or in the future. They might as well be lit on fire ten days after going online. The same goes for politics podcasts. They’re talk radio, only rarefied and highbrow. But they have the same shelf life. And they partake of the selfsame contemporary obsession with The New that all people of good will, but certainly Christians (and Jews and Muslims), should repudiate in all its forms. Go read Rolf Dobelli’s Stop Reading the News and you’ll realize just how unimportant—in general and to your own daily life—“keeping up with the news” is. That goes for politics and sports and entertainment (but I repeat myself) as much as for anything else. Stop reading the news translates to stop listening to the news, which I will gloss here as stop listening to podcasts devoted to The New.

Fifth, podcasts have increasingly become niche and personalized, as so much in our digital economy has. You, the individual consumer-listener, pay the individual content-maker/podcaster, perhaps become a Patreon supporter, and thereby receive Exclusive Access and Personal Benefits and other just-for-you paid-for goods and services. Am I the only one who finds all of this ever so slightly weird, even gross? I don’t begrudge anyone hustling to do their thing or to find an audience, precisely outside of the decaying and desiccated institutions that act as gatekeepers today. But there’s something icky about it nonetheless. In the same way that news-watchers can exist in entirely different moral and epistemic universes—one presided over and mediated by Fox News, the other by MSNBC—so podcast-listeners curate their own little private aural worlds with nary a glance at or interruption from another. It doesn’t help that this ecosystem (or ecosphere?) overlaps substantially with the gig-cum-influencer economy, where fame and fortune are always one viral moment away, for anyone and everyone. We’re all always already potentially (in)famous and affluent, if only the digital stars will align. We try to nudge those stars by flooding the market with our content, a sort of astrology or spell-conjuring with ones and zeroes, or in this case, “Thanks for following; while you’re here, check out my SoundCloud.”

In any case, those are at least some of the reasons for increasing your skepticism quotient in this matter. More than a slightly more skeptical eye, though, consider whether you ought to go all the way. For there’s a solution lying close to hand.

Quit podcasts.