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Dr. Ed Uszynski (Ph.D.) is back on the podcast to speak with Tim about a provocative cultural moment: when Max Lucado issued an apology to a multi-ethnic church in San Antonio, TX, following the death of George Floyd. The incident received mixed responses, positively received as being an act of racial reconciliation to being negatively critiqued as an act of bowing to the woke mob. So, Tim and Ed practice perspective-taking in order to understand these differing responses, and they explore some of the particulars and nuances that shape a point of view on a contentious issue.

Transcript

Tim Muehlhoff: Welcome to the Winsome Conviction Podcast. My name is Tim Muehlhoff. I'm a professor of communication at Biola University in La Mirada, California. It's also been my privilege to serve as the co-director of the Winsome Conviction Project that for the last six years we've tried to open lines of communication instead of close lines of communication. We've tried to promote perspective-taking, finding common ground listening, hearing each other's stories.

We also get asked questions periodically. These come through the website. As well as when we speak on these issues, people often come up and ask a specific question looking for advice. Here is the general question we can get. "I've been studying about the trans community, I've been studying about the gay community, I've been studying this issue of race, and I'm really feeling convicted. And I wonder if I shouldn't grab people from the other community and offer an apology. Is there wisdom in doing that?"

Now, I was rereading one of my favorite books by Dr. Ed Uszynski, Untangling Critical Race Theory: What Christians Need to Know and Why It Matters, University Press, and I remembered that he had a section in the book where a well-known Christian actually did offer an apology, and it got very different reactions. This podcast, we're going to ask Dr. Uszynski what he thinks about that. But let me introduce my friend of over 40 years. Dr. Ed Uszynski has his PhD from Bowling Green in American Culture Studies. He's been on staff with crew. He served for 33 years. Him and his wife, Amy, continue to give leadership to family life, marriage conferences. And they speak at these conferences. We've known each other forever. When I first met Ed, I had hair.

Ed Uszynski: Wow.

Tim Muehlhoff: I'm pretty sure I had long, robust hair. Is that not true? Welcome to the program, Dr. Ed Uszynski. Did I not have hair when we first met?

Ed Uszynski: It was Fabio-like. It was shampoo commercial worthy.

Tim Muehlhoff: Thank you for listening to the Winsome Conviction Podcast. Bro, that's amazing. I used to have hair down to my shoulders in high school and wore elephant bell bottom jeans, if you remember these, that covered your complete foot. It was very hard to walk in those shoes, in those bell bottoms. All right, my friend, I'm going to put you on the hot seat. Your book is excellent. I've said this before and before.

Ed Uszynski: Thank you.

Tim Muehlhoff: And we've actually done a whole episode on critical race theory, and I so admire your courage for jumping into this topic. But I remembered in the book that Max Lucado, very popular Christian author... Man, did you read Max Lucado, No Wonder They Call Him Savior, in college?

Ed Uszynski: Yes. Well, it was post-college, so early '90s. I remember doing a study with a group of guys around a handful of different Lucado books. No Wonder They Call Him Savior and... Oh my gosh, I don't remember. I still have them on my bookshelves. But there were several that came out, and we couldn't get enough of him back then.

Tim Muehlhoff: Oh, we could not get enough of Max Lucado. So appreciated his creativity. Well, just months after George Floyd was killed, Max Lucado got on his knees in front of a group of thousands at a multi-ethnic church in San Antonio and prayed the following: "I am sorry that I have been silent. I'm sorry that my head has been buried in the sand. My brothers and sisters are hurting, and I am sorry I made them feel less than. I did not hear. I did not see. I did not understand."

What's interesting in your book is it received wildly different responses. One Black pastor said, quote, "Never in my life have I ever seen a white person say to me that, 'I'm sorry.'" But others responded, such as a popular podcaster, "Max Lucado bows to the woke mob." Okay, so when we have a situation like that, first, what I love about your book about critical race theory is how you really do perspective taking with different groups and why CRT evokes such powerful emotions. I want you to step into your perspective-taking mode and give me both maybe why Max Lucado felt compelled to do that and why it received a positive reaction from this one Black pastor. And then what would be the counter to that? Why that would be concerning that Max Lucado, as a white Christian leader, author would do that. And then at the very end, give me your best advice about offering an apology if we feel led to do that. Dr. Uszynski, put on your perspective-taking hat, jump in and say why Max might've felt that way and why certain groups it would be positively received and why it might not be well received.

Ed Uszynski: Yeah, what a great question. And there's three different perspectives represented in here. And I'll just say this: I don't know any of these people. I've not talked directly to any of them, so I don't know. I can respond based on what I thought when I first read it.

Max Lucado's perspective, he seems to be genuinely confessing his own experience as a pastor. And I say that because a lot of times these confessions, they sound like a PR firm came up with them and they can just be slapped on almost like it was something coerced or something that they felt like they had to do because it was trendy. And when I first read this, I just got the sense that Max Lucado had a bit of a breakthrough.

Now, again, think of the setting. He's at a prayer meeting with a ton of people, Black and white. It is on the heels of this very incendiary and horrible murder that happened in Minneapolis, so emotions are already high. There's lots of reflection that's going on in all directions. And Max Lucado, he's either doing this for one of two reasons in my opinion, because he genuinely has not had opportunities to do this before and he was struck by just his lack of concern, which I think is fair. I think many of us, maybe most of us can get on that train at any point in time about any number of people when we're suddenly surrounded with that group of people. If I was suddenly surrounded with Israelis or surrounded with Palestinians and I heard their own stories of what their experience has been in the midst of their suffering, it would be very right, I think, for me to recognize I've not cared much about this. My heart has not been engaged with this at all. And I think that's maybe what was happening with Max Lucado.

The other thing that he might be doing is he just recognizes his value as a proxy. And again, I'm not saying that it was disingenuous, but he realizes that he's representative... Whether this is fair or not, he realizes that he's representative of white authority in Evangelicalism. And in general, the narrative about us, and I'll say us because I am a part of that group, has been negligence, it's been betrayal, it's been not stepping up. When these moments have happened in society, it's been very easy for us just to go about our church business, to go about our para-church work and not feel anything with our brothers and sisters that have been affected by it, specifically our brothers and sisters of color that have been affected by these moments. He recognizes the proxy value of him standing in on behalf of a group of people. And at least for this moment, he is confessing a heart that has been cold towards all of it. That's one perspective.

Tim Muehlhoff: Hey, can I jump in real quick? And just what struck me as you were talking, one of our favorite guests was Richard Mao on this podcast. And he told the story, Ed, of going to a church in LA, an affirming church, a gay-affirming church where they were reading the names of people who have died through AIDS. And people were weeping. And he stood in the midst of that and said it forever changed him, forever. It didn't change, per se, his moral view of homosexuality, or he didn't suddenly become affirming, but he said, "You don't walk out of that room, out of that sanctuary and not be forever changed by hearing the reading of those names and seeing people literally having to console each other because people were weeping." He said it just profoundly had an impact. That just came to my mind as you were saying what might have motivated Max Lucado.

Ed Uszynski: So good. And that's why relationship matters, because when you're in relationship, you encounter stories, you encounter people's narratives. And narrative changes us. Tim, let me just throw this in parentheses. It's why the lack of reading and the downturn in reading consumption in this generation is actually going to make it more difficult to feel what other people feel, to understand people from different backgrounds.

I read like crazy when I was a little kid. I was just thinking about this the other day. I read so many novels and so many stories back in the '70s and '80s. I felt like I had met thousands of people and their stories before I'd ever actually gone to college. Do you understand what I'm saying? You get exposed to different worlds and different ways of being just through the authors, but also through the characters that are created by the authors. And it's so helpful, I think, in interpersonal communication, it's a wonder that we're so poor at it today when our reading levels are so low. It's not a wonder.

Tim Muehlhoff: Hey, let me comment on that real quick. In Winsome Persuasion, the book I wrote with the co-director, Rick Langer, we actually mention a study that was done, and I just want to pause before I say this, by the University of Michigan.

Ed Uszynski: Go Buckeyes. Go Buckeyes.

Tim Muehlhoff: What listeners may not know, the subtext is Ed is a lifelong Ohio State fan, I'm a lifelong Michigan Wolverine fan, as we like to say it, just one year away from being national champions.

Ed Uszynski: Wow.

Tim Muehlhoff: This study, we're not going to go on. This is my podcast. I want you to show great restraint.

Ed Uszynski: I'll give you room. It is yours.

Tim Muehlhoff: All right, brother, thank you. No, study done from a University of Michigan absolutely linking ability to be empathetic with reading habits. And they have absolutely charted exactly what you just said; that as reading habits have gone down, empathy has gone down as well. And so that's just a academic study that came to mind that we actually quoted in the book. Okay, that's one perspective.

Ed Uszynski: That's one perspective.

Tim Muehlhoff: Yep.

Ed Uszynski: Let's talk about the podcaster that said Max Lucado bows to the woke mob, his perspective. There was this feeling then, and I think the feeling is still here now, but it was intense five years ago when all this took place, that we're being forced to change, that there's something wrong with me that needs to be fixed. And number one, I don't ever like to have to face that. Whether it's true or not, I don't like that it's even being suggested, but I certainly don't want... It's very, very few people that you trust in your circle to actually confront you about something that needs to be changed, let alone just strangers, right? That's just human nature.

And so this feeling that there's, again, this progressive agenda, that there's these politicians, there's these academics, there's these activists that are trying to force me to become something I don't want to become, they're trying to force me to believe things I don't believe. And so any whiff of one of us... In this case, again, we're talking about race, we're talking along race lines, so any hint of a white person who looks or sounds like he or she is being coerced or almost forced under mob pressure to confess, a struggle session as they call him in the Marxist world, the communist world, it's repulsive to me. And I feel like I need to stand against that. I need to shut that down wherever I see it happening because it affects me. If nothing else, when are they going to come from me and make me have to bow down in front of the group? And I don't want to do that.

Also, just because fundamentally, and we talked about this when we talked about critical race theory in a different session, but if I don't believe that race is the problem that everybody's trying to make it seem like it is, then my settings, my internal settings are set at a point where I'm going to... Anytime I smell that somebody is trying to make race an issue, I feel an obligation to shut that down. Again, for somebody that's got a podcast, if you've got a podcast, you have a measure of power, you have a measure of influence, and I want to use my power and influence to shut that down wherever I see that going on because I don't think it's true. I disagree with it fundamentally. And so that's where I think, again, to be fair... Again, I don't know what exactly was going on, but I've listened to enough of those and read enough of those that I can assume that maybe that's where he's coming from.

Tim Muehlhoff: And let me-

Ed Uszynski: The black pastor. Yeah, do you want to say anything about that?

Tim Muehlhoff: Yeah, let me just jump in and say that podcaster, even though I take issue obviously with the snarky way he decided to voice his concerns, is that there are agendas. If we know anything from critical theory, that this is not a neutral playing field. People have agendas. There was a time we thought the nightly news was objective. It never has been. There was a time we thought documentaries... Oh, well, this is a documentary; they're just presenting the facts. And now we know through critical theory that, no, everything's edited. There's a point of view every single time we consume entertainment, art, rhetoric, speeches. He's not wrong to say there is a group. Now, he's calling them a mob, which is inflammatory, but there are people that would have an agenda. And no doubt race is part of that chess piece that different sides are trying to leverage and frame, so he's not wrong to think there are people who have an agenda.

Ed Uszynski: Tim, not only are there people who have an agenda, but I try to make a big deal about this in my book is the separation between what I think should be the church's agenda in this discussion versus a purely political agenda in this discussion. And again, whether this is right or wrong, I expect a church mob to be much more ready to humble themselves before these horrible moments that happen and recognize, apart from political agenda, apart from even political thinking, there are people suffering right now. Regardless of how that suffering came about, can I step into that with them? Can I recognize maybe my own complicity?

This is going on all over the place in the prayers in the Old Testament where people were able to connect themselves to their own people and their own people's past bad decisions, their own people's past idolatry, their own people's past mistreatment of other peoples, and pray and ask God for mercy on us because we know that we've got that same stuff in our own hearts, whether we've actually acted on it or not in this immediate moment. We have that same Sinfulness inside of us. Would you have mercy on us, God? I expect the church to have access to that kind of behavior in a situation like this, a church mob to have access to that kind of behavior and it be a good thing.

I think it looks very different. I've felt the pressure of the mob, so to speak, in my PhD program where there was very clearly a political agenda, and it was full of enmity, it was full of hatred. It was replacing one injustice with another injustice. That's what I always felt where there was this concern for the way minorities were being treated, all different kinds of minorities, sexual, racial, gender, everything that we want to look at under that umbrella. But their response to that mistreatment was anger and hatred and judgment and blanket condemnation towards anybody that represents anything that's remotely different from this perspective, and then saying, "Well, you guys are just as evil as the people that you want to stand against in your approach."

Tim Muehlhoff: One of the textbooks we had to read was from Dr. Lawrence Grossberg at UNC Chapel Hill, who's brilliant, by the way. He's the leading American scholar when it comes to cultural studies within the communication discipline. He wrote a book called We Got to Get Out of This Place. It's a response to conservativism. He's putting it on the front end saying, "Listen, conservativism by and large is bad, and it's time we got out of here." And so sometimes they put the agenda on the front end saying, "Yeah, I'm absolutely critiquing conservativism and saying we need to resist it and get out." It'd be hard to argue for conservativism in certain places. Yeah, sometimes that agenda is right there. Is there-

Ed Uszynski: [inaudible 00:19:48]. Yeah, the Black pastor.

Tim Muehlhoff: Yeah, great.

Ed Uszynski: He says, "Never in my life have I ever seen a white person say to me that I'm sorry." He's going even beyond a white Christian or a white pastor; he's saying he's never had the experience of a white person humbling themselves and uttering the words, "I am sorry." And again, that's somewhat revelational. We don't need to try to attach anything else to that. This is a grown man who's in ministry who's a leader in the community, and he's saying he's never experienced... He's not saying anything else about Max's denomination or his role as a pastor or anything else. He's just saying, "This moved me to see a white man actually say, 'I'm sorry.'"

Which means... And again, this is what I would love to follow up with him, what have you seen? What's been the replacement? What's on the other side of the coin from that? What has your experience been? My guess is that he has seen a lot of defensiveness, that he's seen a lot of paternalism, that he has seen a lot of white people try to explain away his pain or his experience or his account of the incident, whatever the incident may be, that he's interacted with lots of white politicians and other white ministry leaders who felt like they had all the answers and no questions. That's my guess based on my own interactions with other Black leaders who have said similar things when they've encountered something from a white person for the first time that surprised them, encountered a form of humility or encountered a, "Here, you take the leadership seat. Here, you come sit alongside. Here, we're going to take your agenda instead of ours." And there's regularly this surprise, that does not usually happen, or I've never experienced that before, which is very telling.

I think that one sentence is just full of deeper conversation, that, "I've never in my life seen a white person say to me that, 'I'm sorry.'" Is just loaded with tell me more about that. Tell me more about what you have experienced.

Tim Muehlhoff: Yeah. Okay, so a person comes up to you and says, "Okay, I'm feeling convicted. I'm thinking about the wisdom of apologizing." What would be the dos and don'ts of the apology? I could see the apology going a little bit sideways if I say, "Look, I am speaking for all." You know what I mean? I think that's going to get us in trouble a little bit. But what would be the dos and don'ts as a person is wrestling maybe with a stirring of the spirit?

Ed Uszynski: Yeah, and I'd love for you to join me in this. I know you think about this all the time. The first thing that comes in my mind is I want to know what the actual context is. In some ways, you could almost do more damage if you're sloppy or reckless, or again, you're doing this maybe even more for yourself. And again, I've encountered all of this. You're doing this because it's going to make you look good or you're going to be able to put this on social in some kind of way, and you're going to be served by this apology. It's just going to create a bigger problem. It would be better not to say anything.

Are you in a context with friends or people that you actually have relationship with? Or is it a setting where you don't really know anybody at all? That would be another question that I would have as to who exactly are we doing this with? Because I think way more can be gained when you're in at least some kind of a relationship with people. Then maybe you're at work, and so you're not really good friends, but you're regular acquaintances and you've got some relational history, an apology may be more meaningful in a setting like that because you've actually shown interest. Again, I'm assuming that you have. You've shown interest in people's lives; you've actually listened to their stories. And it's in light of what I've heard them share that I feel like from my heart I want to apologize. I'm not even exactly sure what to say, I just know that there's something inside of me that feels like this hasn't been right, and I'm sorry.

That's really different, I think, than, like you said, Tim, just trying to represent a group of people with a group of people that you don't know and have no relationship with, have no social or relational capital with. I think those will tend to have a better chance of not going well or being misunderstood, of not being given the benefit of the doubts, of there being suspicion attached to it. Which, again, is not the fault of the apologizer, it's just that the setting and the context and the lack of relationship is not going to cause this to be heard, is going to cause this to not be heard the way you want it to be heard. If you really do want to do this, maybe you need to build some relationship first. That's a thought. What else would you throw on top of that, Tim?

Tim Muehlhoff: Well, boy, if ever there was a time to get input, and get input from a wide variety of people, both I think academics and laypeople, practitioners. A book came to mind, and I found it quickly, called Does Apologizing Work?: An Empirical Test of the Conventional Wisdom by Cambridge University Press. And very quickly, to summarize the entire book, which is unfair, is that they would say it doesn't move the needle or it does more damage than good.

Ed Uszynski: Interesting.

Tim Muehlhoff: Now, that's a-

Ed Uszynski: Why is that? Why?

Tim Muehlhoff: I'm not totally sure. I think it might be what you're saying, is, okay, who are you? And you're apologizing? What does that even matter to me? Or we expect way too much from the apology or the apology doesn't work because immediately they read... What really stays with these people is the podcaster's comment that, "Oh, he fell to the woke mob," and that's what white people really think. Get rid of Max. He might've been a tender-hearted guy, but here's what the white community really believes. And that's putting way too much onus on either Max Lucado or this podcaster. It might be hard to say, "This person has the ethos for my community for us to accept the apology." All I'm saying is this is a very complex issue. If ever there was a time, like with carpentry, you measure twice, cut once, once those words are out there, they're out there. And so if ever there was a time to really think about the ramifications of what I'm about to do... I wish we had a better answer, but it's complex.

Ed Uszynski: Tim, don't you think also at the end of this... And again, I'm not trying to be overly simplistic. And I don't know, sometimes words really are needed and necessary, so every situation is going to be different, but at the end of the day, what people really want is behavior to change. And sometimes the behavior that needs to change when it comes to this race topic, for example, is to continue to show interest in me as a human being. It's to continue to ask questions about my life. It's to come to my kid's game. It's to have me over for dinner and come to my house for dinner in a place maybe you wouldn't normally come. It's to step across lines that are drawn where there's fear present. It's uncomfortable to go here. And when you keep showing up in those spaces, that apology actually speaks way louder usually than any words would. Again, I'm not saying there's never a place for words, but that's really what people want.

And then when there's these blanket apologies that come from denominations, let's say... Again, it'd be interesting to see in that book if there's a distinction between settings and who's doing it and types of apologies. But when these blanket statements come out from denominations that are apologizing for 100 years of racist behavior, and there's almost this feeling like... And again, I'm not trying to be overly cynical about it, but there's almost this feeling like, okay, we've cleaned that up now. We checked that box, and now we can all just get back to doing the business of ministry. And/or there really isn't any change that trickles down to the local congregational level. You make this statement from way up high, but we don't feel it in our week to week living with each other as a congregation because the individual pastors haven't actually embraced a different posture when it comes to this topic. And it's like, well, yeah, that really didn't mean anything for me.

And that's why I say a proxy. A guy like a Max Lucado, just coming back to the beginning of where we started this whole thing, he actually is a celebrity within the white evangelical world, in a sense. Again, that crass term. But he's written books, he's well known. His name carries weight. He's a people's pastor. The reason why we all loved his books is because he was a great storyteller. He did expand your imagination for other people's lives and their experiences. And so when he says out loud, "I feel like my heart has been far from this. I've actually done things that make other non-white people feel less than. I'm admitting that. I'm embarrassed by it. I didn't hear, I wasn't paying attention, and I didn't try to understand." Again, I didn't hear him do it, but even the tone, I wonder, was there grief in that in the way that he prayed that prayer? Was it really almost like he's really praying to God and not to the crowd? I think as a proxy, as a stand-in, that carries more weight than, let's say, if just I showed up and did that. Doesn't have the same weight. Doesn't have the same recognition in the area. Oh, we didn't say that. That is his area. That's his ministry world. [inaudible 00:30:54].

Tim Muehlhoff: And Ed, I wonder if we could... Not to make it overly simplistic. Imagine you and I are speaking at a family life marriage conference. Okay, let's take this out of the realm of race and rhetoric and public apologies. You and I are speaking at a conference, and a guy walks up to us or a wife walks up to us and says, "Listen, I'm thinking about apologizing to my husband or being late," or, "I'm apologizing for not being conscientious how to use the credit card. I'm thinking about apologizing X, Y, and Z." I suspect our answer would be this: "Listen, I think the apology is good, but if you go back to misusing the credit card right away or if you're late the next day, that apology actually hurts. That apology didn't help." I thought of that when you said, "Hey, the apology is one thing, but a community's looking at, okay, what's going to happen tomorrow?"

Ed Uszynski: Yeah, that's good.

Tim Muehlhoff: And I think we'd say that to that spouse. I think we would.

Ed Uszynski: That's good. Well, you bring in the whole marriage thing. Almost had a fight on the way to the podcast today in my own house as I was scurrying through to try to get out here. I've been running around for hours getting things done, paying bills, trying to do home stuff, just crazy stuff that you have to do before I came to come talk with you. Well, my wife, Amy, came into the kitchen. I was sitting in the living room, was just getting ready to come outside to do this with you, and she said, "Is that your dish on the counter?" And my immediate internal perspective was one of anger because I knew why she was bringing it up. And what I wanted to say is, "I've been working for the last three hours on stuff to keep our house together, and you're going to hit me with the dish?"

But if I'm going to take her perspective, she doesn't know anything about that. She's not in that with me. She's been asking us to not lead dishes in that spot for going on, oh, I don't know, 20-some years now. And so anytime a dish winds up there and she has access to the person she thinks set it there, she's going to bring it up. Two very, very, very different perspectives. I think we're both right. See, that's when things also get really, really messy, when we're both right. But there's also a wrongness in that neither one of us is slowing down long enough to ask why the other person might feel the way they feel about that dish.

And really, again, I don't know if this is working or not, but that's why it never fails to lay myself aside, to die to myself as the gospel calls us to do on a daily basis and to say, "Help me. God, help me see them. Help me not worry about trying to get them to see me right away. Help me to gappe them. Help me to do what's best for them in spite of what it costs me, and you meet my needs. Give me the courage. Give me the love that I don't feel. Give me the understanding that I don't have access to. Give me wisdom to see how all these different parts fit together. And step into this moment and be the hands and feet of Jesus." Again, that sounds so cliche, but could I step into this as a proxy for you and bring healing?

That's an amazing way to live if I can get past myself on any individual day. If I get past myself, really great things can happen, whether it's in the kitchen with my wife or it's in the parking lot at Walmart or it's at a prayer ceremony after a horrendous thing has happened in our society. If I can get past myself long enough to genuinely care for that other person who's got their own story for how they got here, their own sins, their own successes, can I get in touch with those long enough that I can feel something with them and be an agent of healing? It's a great way to live.

Tim Muehlhoff: Oh, what a great way to stop. What a good word. And seeing is not condoning. Like Richard Mao, healing the pain of a community is not condoning, it's healing. I think that's really important.

Ed Uszynski: Good, Tim.

Tim Muehlhoff: Well, Ed, as we wrap up, thanks so much for being on the podcast. One thing does occur to me, though. Interesting that we mentioned a study from Cambridge, you mentioned a study from Michigan, but we didn't mention anything from Ohio State.

Ed Uszynski: OH. IO.

Tim Muehlhoff: Not to read anything into that-

Ed Uszynski: IO.

Tim Muehlhoff: ... it just means we're going where the research takes us. Hey, thank you for listening to the Winsome Conviction Podcast. My name is to Muehlhoff. We don't take your listening for granted. If you like what you're hearing, you want more, go to winsomeconviction.com. Check out our website. Sign up for the quarterly newsletter. Give us a like on whatever platform. Thank you so much for listening, and we'll continue the conversation later.