Dick Staub Interviews Mary Poplin

I just ran across a tran­script of an inter­view with Mary Poplin.

Dr. Poplin is the Dean of the School of Edu­ca­tion­al Stud­ies at Clare­mont Grad­u­ate Uni­ver­si­ty and she’s cur­rent­ly writ­ing a book (title unknown) about inte­grat­ing faith and acad­e­mia. (see her fac­ul­ty bio page)

You should real­ly read the inter­view on Dick Staub’s web­site, but I’ve excerpt­ed the most fas­ci­nat­ing bits…

Q. Yeah. Now, what was it at that point that was off-putting about Chris­tian­i­ty? In oth­er words, you had been raised in a Chris­t­ian home, and now you’re out doing Zen and going to see if you can bend spoons through men­tal telepa­thy. And you’re into, you know, kind of any­thing except what was famil­iar and what you knew. What was it about Chris­tian­i­ty that was a non-starter for you, in your mind, at least?
A. In my mind. In my mind I had accept­ed what I had been told by the uni­ver­si­ty, that Chris­tian­i­ty was oppres­sive. You know, I was work­ing in the area of lib­er­a­tion, you know, edu­ca­tion of the poor, edu­ca­tion of peo­ple of col­or, and so I just accept­ed that what I’d been told. Chris­tian­i­ty was ter­ri­ble for women. You know, it nev­er occurred to me to actu­al­ly like look around the world and see where women were the freest and note that, gee, those were coun­tries that were dom­i­nat­ed by Chris­tian­i­ty. But I didn’t think that way.

Q. How per­va­sive was that anti-Chris­t­ian bias in your edu­ca­tion as you were going through the sys­tem?
A. I’d say, I would say in prob­a­bly 50 per­cent of my edu­ca­tion peo­ple would say neg­a­tive things about Chris­tian­i­ty.

Q. Were peo­ple ever say­ing pos­i­tive things? Or were…
A. No. I nev­er heard… I nev­er had a pro­fes­sor who said any­thing pos­i­tive.

and lat­er …

Q. So you kind of bought the line. What is it that makes you… Well, what hap­pens that moves you towards a dif­fer­ent and more com­pelling view of Chris­tian­i­ty?
A. Okay. I think one of the main things is I had a grad­u­ate stu­dent who I knew lived his life dif­fer­ent­ly. And he is Native Amer­i­can. And, first of all, he prayed for me for eight years. And he would kind of keep in touch. And he would say irri­tat­ing things like, If you ever want to do any­thing with your spir­i­tu­al life, I’d like to help you. That was irri­tat­ing because I thought I was doing plen­ty with my spir­i­tu­al life. You know, I was bend­ing spoons.

Q. I’m bend­ing spoons and stuff. I mean, what do you want?
A. Exact­ly. What more?

Q. Does it get any more mean­ing­ful than this?
A. And the oth­er thing, and the more dis­tress­ing thing, is he would ask me ques­tions like, Do you believe in evil? And I would real­ize that I couldn’t answer the ques­tion con­sis­tent­ly.

Q. Uh-huh.
A. Now, since I was mov­ing rapid­ly toward post-mod­ernism, you know, I could sort of get rid of that prob­lem because, you know, just choose your lan­guage com­mu­ni­ty. One day you believe in evil and the next minute you don’t. But then he would ask real­ly irri­tat­ing ques­tions. If I said I didn’t believe in evil he would say things like, Well, was Hitler evil?

Q. Uh-huh.
A. And you know, things that both­ered me intel­lec­tu­al­ly. Then he had worked at our uni­ver­si­ty on a sab­bat­i­cal he had. He was now a pro­fes­sor, and for a year. And when he left I had a dream actu­al­ly. I was still, you know, felt kind of emp­ty and con­fused. And in the dream I’m in a long line of peo­ple sus­pend­ed in a night air. We’re all in the same gray robes. I can’t see the begin­ning of the line because it’s snaking around so long. I can’t even see the end of the line, it just kind of dis­ap­pears. But that’s how long… The line just seemed eter­nal on both ends. And all of a sud­den I real­ized – and we’re not talk­ing to each oth­er, we’re just in sin­gle file – I real­ized that off to my right there’s some­thing going on. And I look and it’s just like Leonar­do da Vinci’s paint­ing of the Last Sup­per.

Q. Uh-huh.
A. It’s in col­or, which I’ve nev­er before had a dream in col­or. And it is… But the dif­fer­ence is it’s live. They’re still sit­ting out, like I’m sure they didn’t sit in the Last Sup­per, but they’re sit­ting out fac­ing us. But Jesus is not at the table with them. He’s stand­ing greet­ing us in line. And when I looked at Jesus I knew who he… I mean, I knew imme­di­ate­ly what I was see­ing. And I couldn’t even look at him, but for a sec­ond. I knelt… I fell down to his feet and start­ed weep­ing. And the only way I can describe the feel­ing I had in the dream is that I could sense every cell in my body and I felt shame. Just total shame in every cell in my body. So in the dream then he grabs my shoul­ders and I feel total peace, like I had nev­er felt before in my life. And then I woke up and I was actu­al­ly phys­i­cal­ly cry­ing. So I go to the phone and I call this gen­tle­man, and I say – and I did not know, he had nev­er told me he was a Chris­t­ian…

Q. Real­ly.
A. Nev­er. And that was good.

Q. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
A. Because I prob­a­bly wouldn’t have called him. But any­way, I called him and said, I think I need to talk to you about my spir­i­tu­al life. And he said – he lives in San Diego and I’m in Los Ange­les – he said, Well, let’s meet for din­ner. He named a restau­rant in Dana Point, in between the cities, and we met there. And he said to me, Why do you think you have to do some­thing with your spir­i­tu­al life now? And out of my mouth came some­thing I’d nev­er thought about. I said to him, I have some black thing in my chest.

Q. Wow.
A. And I don’t know what it is. And he just nod­ded. I had told him the dream. I said, What do I do? And he said, Well, do you have a Bible? And I said, Well, no. I don’t think so. I had one when I was a kid, but I don’t know where it is. And he said… Well any­way, he made sure I had one before we split up that night. And I… He said to me, Well, you could read five Psalms a day and one book of Proverbs. And I thought, well okay, I’m going to do it. I mean, I’m real­ly going to do this this time. And then he said casu­al­ly, after we had bought the Bible and we’re get­ting into our indi­vid­ual cars, he said, And since Jesus was the one in your dream, you might even read the New Tes­ta­ment. And that’s how casu­al he was about that.

Q. Hm.
A. So then I began to read them and we began to meet in a town in between our cities for break­fast or some­thing about once a week. And he would say, How’s the read­ing going? And I would always say the same thing, I would say, I hate the Psalms but I love the Proverbs.

Q. Uh-huh.
A. And I was read­ing the New Tes­ta­ment a lit­tle bit. And he’d say, Well, why do you hate the Psalms? And I said, Because David’s always telling God to kill his ene­mies.

Q. Uh-huh.
A. And dash their chil­dren to stones, and that’s not a nice thing. So he would just nod and he would just say, Well, can you keep read­ing them? And I said, Yes. And then along about… Okay, that was Novem­ber, Novem­ber to Jan­u­ary. And then in Jan­u­ary my moth­er want­ed to go to North Car­oli­na to where she had grown up. And we went to this lit­tle church, Methodist church, not because she was reli­gious, she just want­ed to see her friends. And we got there and I was real­ly moved to just go up to the altar and give my life to the Lord.

con­tin­u­ing the sto­ry…

Q. And now you show up in church with your mom –
A. Yes.

Q. – which she want­ed to do just for social rea­sons. And now her daugh­ter, who ought to know bet­ter, has-has gone for­ward to receive Christ. What was that day like? And how did it make a dif­fer­ence?
A. It wasn’t even an altar call. You know, the Methodists don’t real­ly do altar calls.

Q. Yeah.
A. So it was a com­mu­nion call.

Q. Yeah.
A. And the guy said, you know, you don’t have to be a mem­ber of the church to take com­mu­nion, you don’t have to be a mem­ber of any church. You just have to believe that Jesus Christ lived, that he died for your sins, and you have to want him in your life. And when he said that, I was just so pow­er­ful­ly moved that I actu­al­ly men­tal­ly thought, even if a tor­na­do rips through this build­ing, I’m going to get that com­mu­nion.

Q. Real­ly.
A. Uh-huh.

Q. I want him in my life –
A. Yeah.

Q. – is what you were say­ing.
A. Yeah, that was it. And when I got to the altar…

Q. Had you tak­en com­mu­nion since high school?
A. No. And when I got to the altar, you know, I had nev­er seen real­ly an altar call so I didn’t, this was just kind of won­der-aged, so I took the com­mu­nion and I didn’t even lis­ten to the guy. All I did was I knelt down and I said, Please come and get me. Please come and get me. Please come and get me. And when I took the com­mu­nion and I said that, I felt free. I felt like tons of things had been lift­ed off of me. And I began to have an insa­tiable desire to read the Bible.

Q. Wow.
A. And then not long after that I was involved in an inci­dent that you could only say dis­played evil. And that night when I opened up the Psalms, I under­stood. It was just like I had imme­di­ate rev­e­la­tion. It was almost like scales falling from your eyes?

Q. Wow.
A. I under­stood that evil exist­ed, I had no ques­tion about it, and I under­stood that it was in me.

and the inter­view wraps up with

Q. Yeah. And what did you say?
A. And I said, You know, I have now seen rad­i­cal, or the real Chris­tian­i­ty lived. I know what it is. I total­ly believe it. And now, when I go to pre­pare my class I know that I’m teach­ing some­thing else. And I feel like a liar.

Q. Wow.
A. Yeah. So when I real­ized what it was there was a sense of relief.

Q. Feel like a liar how?
A. Because I was teach­ing only sec­u­lar the­o­ries and I wasn’t‑I wasn’t telling the stu­dents what I would call the whole truth about pover­ty, about how you work with the, you know, about Christ. About, you know… Chris­tian­i­ty is the most chal­leng­ing… I mean, if I just talk about it intel­lec­tu­al­ly, it’s the most chal­leng­ing thing there is. And yet it has no place at the intel­lec­tu­al table. And so I began to strug­gle, okay, I had prayed to the Lord to take me out of Clare­mont. He hadn’t done it. And I need­ed to learn how to stay there. I need­ed to learn how to inte­grate…

Q. Wow. How would you describe some of what you’re learn­ing about stay­ing there, about-about how you do this inte­gra­tive work?
A. Uh-huh. There’s mul­ti­ple lev­els of it, but I would say the first thing that I start­ed to do as… Well, ini­tial­ly my first response was to think that all sec­u­lar the­o­ries were false. And they’re not.

Q. Right.
A. They’re only par­tial­ly false. Because evil can­not cre­ate any­thing, so evil can’t cre­ate a phi­los­o­phy.

Q. Right.
A. And it wouldn’t stand if it were all false.

Q. Right.
A. So what I began to do is to try, is to actu­al­ly devel­op a class, this was just an option­al class that stu­dents can take on Judeo-Chris­t­ian thought and edu­ca­tion, and we’d take a phi­los­o­phy or the­o­ry that’s impact­ed edu­ca­tion and we’d line out its prin­ci­ples, and then we’d line out the scrip­ture that either match­es or doesn’t match with it –

Q. Hm, inter­est­ing.
A. – so we can see where it works and where it doesn’t work. So that was one place. The oth­er place is I began to try to take the intel­lec­tu­al prob­lems that I care about, like the edu­ca­tion of pover­ty, and think of how Jesus, what would the mind of Christ, how would Jesus have approached this issue in terms of what’s going on here? Why is it… Why are we mak­ing no progress here?

Q. Yeah.
A. So I took, for exam­ple… Do you want me to go on with the exam­ple?

Q. Sure, please.
A. The exam­ple of the poor in edu­ca­tion. And I began to real­ize that in the uni­ver­si­ty we were doing all these social jus­tice things, often Marx­ist crit­i­cal the­o­ry kinds of things, and I was teach­ing that. I had been for prob­a­bly ten years. And but we weren’t mak­ing real­ly any progress with the poor. They were still not learn­ing to read, not learn­ing to do math­e­mat­ics, they weren’t get­ting into bet­ter jobs. And then you have the pub­lic pol­i­cy mak­ers who are all doing account­abil­i­ty things. You know, test­ing and things like that. The account­abil­i­ty peo­ple don’t talk about social jus­tice, the social jus­tice peo­ple total­ly reject the account­abil­i­ty move­ment. And then I began to real­ize that that’s exact­ly what the Lord has always told us would hap­pen. That this was a man­i­fes­ta­tion of how evil works to keep human beings from mak­ing progress in areas like this. And then I began to notice that year as I read the scrip­tures, that eight times in the scrip­tures we’re told to turn nei­ther to the left nor the right.

Q. Uh-huh.
A. And you could actu­al­ly clas­si­fy those two issues, account­abil­i­ty and social jus­tice, as left and right kinds of things.

Q. Uh-huh.
A. And so what hap­pens is you get… Pow­ers and prin­ci­pal­i­ties cause peo­ple to bat­tle between social jus­tice and account­abil­i­ty, when in real­i­ty we will nev­er make any progress towards social jus­tice until we com­bine those two things. And so that’s sort of my new, you know, intel­lec­tu­al task is to try to get that done.

Q. And how is that being received with­in the aca­d­e­m­ic com­mu­ni­ty? First of all, by peers?
A. Uh-huh. Well, our pro­gram has decid­ed to make a stand there. I mean, we have decid­ed to do that. But in gen­er­al, in the uni­ver­si­ty it’s not well-received because they don’t real­ly want to deal with issues of account­abil­i­ty in any seri­ous way. You know, uni­ver­si­ty fac­ul­ty tend to be rebel­lious, myself includ­ed. And so we… It’s not well-received in the uni­ver­si­ty right now. In fact, if… I just went to a con­fer­ence in Wash­ing­ton DC, and it’s for the account­abil­i­ty move­ment. I mean, you could prob­a­bly have put all the uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sors around a small table. And they were all, most of the peo­ple there, I’d say 70 per­cent of them were edu­ca­tors of col­or from the schools who know that all the things we’ve done haven’t worked.

Q. Wow. How is this change in your life being received by stu­dents?
A. Actu­al­ly, the stu­dents are pret­ty inter­est­ing. Stu­dents are curi­ous intel­lec­tu­al­ly. They tend to be fair­ly open. None of the cours­es at Clare­mont are required, so no one has to be in my class.

Q. Uh-huh.
A. Cer­tain­ly they know, it’s pret­ty well-known I’m a Chris­t­ian. There was a lit­tle… There was a huge revolt when I first took over the direc­tor­ship of the teacher-ed pro­gram again after hav­ing not done it for five years. And we even had to have plain-clothes secu­ri­ty guards. And about half-way through the revolt the ring­leader said, We hate this Chris­t­ian stuff. And I said, What Chris­t­ian stuff? Because I had not made any­body – I mean, I wasn’t even teach­ing the group, I was direct­ing the pro­gram. And I’d not had any­body read any­thing Chris­t­ian. And I said, What Chris­t­ian stuff? And she couldn’t answer. And at that point some of the oth­er stu­dents in the room kind of got the idea. And a young African Amer­i­can woman just took up for me and said, I’m not putting up with this any­more. I see where you’re com­ing from. And the whole place broke up after that.

Q. Wow. So-so what are you learn­ing about the nature of your call­ing as you under­stand it right now?
A. Okay. Sev­er­al lev­els. I mean, per­son­al­ly, I real­ly need to under­stand the mind of Christ and how it works. And that I’ve got to get through scrip­ture, I think. I mean, I believe that it is revealed in scrip­ture. The strug­gle is to bring the Chris­t­ian world­view back to the intel­lec­tu­al table. That’s real­ly what it is all about. Like the con­fer­ence we were at at Berke­ley. Chris­tians don’t have a place at the intel­lec­tu­al table. If you say some­thing about a Chris­t­ian response or a Chris­t­ian con­struct about an issue in the uni­ver­si­ty, you can just feel the walls go up and just, you know, ice in the room.

Q. Yeah.
A. That does not hap­pen with any oth­er world­view.

Q. Idea. Yeah, yeah.
A. No, not any oth­er ide­ol­o­gy. So that is… And it’s dan­ger­ous. I mean, even intel­lec­tu­al­ly I think it’s dan­ger­ous for a coun­try or a group of intel­lec­tu­al insti­tu­tions like uni­ver­si­ties to actu­al­ly say, There is one world­view we’re not going to deal with.

Q. Uh-huh.
A. It just dimin­ish­es the whole thing. And I think it’s why we’re not mak­ing a lot of progress. And then on the oth­er hand, you know, I think a lot of Chris­t­ian col­leges aren’t doing it either. You know, they have chapel and then they have maybe a required Bible class.

Q. Non-inte­grat­ed.
A. Yeah. But it doesn’t go into the sci­ence class or the his­to­ry class or any­thing else.

Q. Right. Right, right, right.
A. I think we’ve got to inte­grate it.