The Biggest Table

Episode 39 (Laurie Johnson)
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Andrew Camp: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to another episode of The Biggest Table. I'm your host, Andrew Camp, and in this podcast we explore the table, food, eating and hospitality as an arena for experiencing God's love and our love for one another.

And today I'm joined by Laurie Johnson.

Laurie is a professor of political science at Kansas State University. Most of her eight books have aimed at developing a thorough understanding and critique of classical liberal theory. Building on that background to understand current ideological divisions, her book, ideological Possession and the Rise of the New Right, was published in 2019. Her latest book, the Gap in God's Country, A Longer View On Our Culture Wars, was published in 2024 by Wipf & Stock.

She provides weekly content on her political philosophy, YouTube channel, currently with over 24,000 subscribers and its associated podcast. She's co-founder and president of the Maurin Academy, which provides free and low cost online classes and reading groups. She is also associated with John Paul ii Catholic Worker Farm [00:01:00] in Kansas City, Missouri.

So thanks for joining me today, Laurie. I'm excited for your conversation. Uh, and like I mentioned, yeah, thank you. And, and you know, as we were getting situated, um, yeah, I'd loved reading your book. Um, you and I connected through a mutual friend Derek Vreeland. Um, you know, and I'm not versed well in political theory and its implications for, you know, where we are today, but, um, I'm really appreciated and excited to have this conversation.

Laurie Johnson: Me too. Thanks for having me. Um, and I understand your podcast is quite a bit about the food angle as you said, and Yeah. I listened to, um, one of your podcasts, um, where you interviewed Adrian a, I forget his last name. Yeah. Adrian Miller. Yes. Yeah. On Soul Food. And I really enjoyed that. I'm getting into Soul food again 'cause that's kind of, um, part of my family background.

My dad comes from Kentucky, so, um, Adrian's right, that, um, white and black people in the South both kind of like [00:02:00] share that parts of that cuisine. Right. It also doesn't have to be unhealthy. So I was like, wow. Finally somebody who actually, so I really appreciate your podcast.

Andrew Camp: Thank you very much. I really appreciate that.

And so we're just gonna jump right in just because I think your book speaks to this cultural moment we're in and you sort of want to paint this broader picture that you know. We're seeing this rise of Christian nationalism and this right-wing populism. Um, it's an issue for a lot of evangelical churches and just churches in general.

Um, but you want to point out that this is actually a symptom of a la la much larger problem. And so can you sort of give us a 30,000 foot view of what, what you mean by this?

Laurie Johnson: Yeah, I'll try. Yeah. Yeah. So you'll notice when you look on those electoral maps, right? Mm-hmm. And especially the ones that break the, um, elections down by county.

If you look at one of those county by county maps that, you know, red and blue, you'll find that [00:03:00] the blue is concentrated almost entirely in urban areas in almost every single state. And that in any part of the country that is relatively unpopulated, um, is, is red. And so right away that indicates that there is a geographical dimension to our political divisions.

And so, you know, to understand why that is, you have to go back into agricultural history, a little bit of economic history. And so that's part of what I did in this book. And, um, I covered, I. The dynamics of the, um, how the capitalist economy, um, uh, more or less as it developed, created these periods of mass migration of, you know, intensive urbanization and really, um, kind of life wrecking dynamics in rural areas starting all the way back.

At one point in the book, I [00:04:00] go back even into the 17th century and earlier to talk about the first development of this where. You know, the, the Lords were in England was where I concentrated because that's kind of where this all began. They kicked the peasants off the land because they wanted to make more money, um, off of the grazing of sheep and things like that.

Well, all of those people who had lived for centuries on the land and had basically provided for themselves as well as giving up a lot of their produce to, um, production, to the Lords in the feudal system, all of them had were dispossessed. Um, over the course of several centuries, but in period, in concentrated effect in the 17th century, and then they were just homeless basically.

Mm-hmm. Um, they left their, their homes, their, their traditional, you know, centuries old, um, agricultural plaque practices that had sustained them so that they could live [00:05:00] without money basically on the land. Either the commons land, basically, that they were allowed to farm, um, and they migrated to the cities where if they couldn't find work, they were criminalized.

All right, so this was sort, sort of the first big mass migration where the, you know, the landowners were more motivated by, um, the ability to make money off of rent that created a market and rent in which there were all these incentives to, um, rent to the most productive tenant farmers who could pay them the most.

The tenant farmers became very competitive with each other, and suddenly you have like the birth of capitalism. Um, and one of the things I really wanted to impress on people is in any of these periods of time where you got a lot of urbanization due to a change in agricultural practices, this led to disinheritance from the land.

Um, the adoption of a money [00:06:00] economy, meaning that, you know, people had to survive by making money. They had no direct access to actually providing for themselves. They had to go wherever the work was. They had to do whatever work was available, oftentimes leaving their families splitting up. Um, if they didn't find work, they, in the early system, they were criminalized and actually thrown into jail as, as vagabond or whatever.

In the United States, we saw, you know, first with colonialism, the dispossession of the, um, native Americans in their way of life. Um, which was a huge disruption, um, and decimation of their culture. And then in the wake of that, and I kind of lean on Wendell Berry, um, in the Unsettling of America, his book, the Unsettling of America.

For this, you see a similar dynamic as the settlers who, you know, for several generations thought, ah, this is the way of life. You know, I can, I can run a farm, I can take care of my family and [00:07:00] what surplus I make, I can sell. But I have this independence. That way of life was also crushed by our big ag system and that big ag system, which encourages farming huge tracts of land, the production of commodity crops.

It has literally decimated our rural areas, broken up families caused people to move wherever they need to do. And our economy is constantly changing. So these wage pe, these wage laborers and salaried people are constantly having to basically shift and change what they do for a living. And retool, while all of that is just culture destroying mm-hmm.

Family destroying, community destroying. So those big events in our economic history and particularly in our agricultural production, had profound effects on the way of life. And rural areas to small towns are just being destroyed. Right? Right. So [00:08:00] that's putting a lot of pressure on people who, who still live in those areas and are trying to survive.

Um, and so I think that this. It's not that it's well articulated or even understood, but this, this creates a lot of anxiety and alienation on the part of people not only who still live there, but the people who left and who tend to now live in these suburban areas, you know, surrounding cities. They also are quite red in a lot of cases.

Mm-hmm. Right? Because they have, they're the ones that have been, whose lives have been radically changed. So, I mean, I could go on. Yeah. But yeah,

Andrew Camp: no, and that's what's interesting is that, you know, um, 'cause a lot of people have bemoaned the rise of this, um, agribusiness and this large crop farming and what it's done to soil and, you know, our food ways, but your, what, what you bring in is this perspective of [00:09:00] what it's doing to our political ideology, our religious belonging, and you know, just community in general.

And, you know, you talked about this violence of dislocation and. You know that it is, you know, capitalism for, for the good. It does do, there's a lot of violence underlying it in a lot of ways from the treatment of humanity, whether that's indigenous folk or African Americans, like a lot of violence has been done, but there's violence being done to the, uh, small farmers who have had to relocate or lose their farms because of big agribusiness.

Laurie Johnson: Mm-hmm. And also small businesses. All the other parts of the, um, rural community have been affected too. So now when you go to a small town in Kansas, in the western part of Kansas, for instance, what you find in the way of, um, a store might be a Dollar General. Mm-hmm. Um, the farmers that [00:10:00] are in the area cannot supply their own people with food.

You can't eat locally. In a small town where you're surrounded by farms, um, there's very few services. The services are poor, like medical services are very, very poor. In a lot of cases, their educational system is bad because they don't have the tax base to be able to pay for one that's better. So, so there oftentimes there are just a, a serious disadvantage.

And for people whose families used to be in these smaller kind of, um, subsistence and diversified agriculture, there's a real big loss of identity. Hmm. And you know, we live in a time of identity politics where a lot of other, um, people, minorities, um, women are like claiming, you know, they want recognition for their identity.

And I think this is again, kind of unconsciously agitating people who've been affected by this massive change in our economy because they [00:11:00] also too want to have an identity, express their identity and have their identity, um, respected. And that hasn't happened in their view. And so they are getting more and more strident, you know?

Yeah. And this, and angry, and this is partly why we, it's, it's, it's an economic conflict, but it's also like literally a social, cultural, psychological conflict in which there's a great deal of just social resentment and they do not feel as though they. Are being heard or listened to. Hmm.

Now at this point, the things have gotten so like bad and out of control, it's kind of hard to, uh, I'm sure for a lot of your listeners to feel, um, a whole lot of like, empathy. Right. Um, but I think we still have to try because the only way out of this situation, whether they always have a, you know, a good argument or not, is to try to understand how we got here.

Andrew Camp: For sure. [00:12:00] Yeah.

Because I think, you know, like, you know, when you talk about capitalism, you talk about this allure of capitalism that, you know, if we follow certain rules, there's this upward mobility that is promised to us, I think in America, you know, and mm-hmm. Um, you, you talk about, you know, leave it to Beaver, the TV show, um, you know, and, and yet when that doesn't line up and when you follow the rules and life, you, you don't live out the American dream.

You know, I think what you're getting at is that, you know, these people who have been forced off their land are dislocated. Um, for whatever reason, they're now finding, Hey, wait, what you promised me isn't happening. And so who am I in light of the loss of, of my identity, my community, my belonging? And so where do I find this belonging,

Laurie Johnson: right?

Yeah. Milton Friedman. And, um, you know, the crew in the 1970s and eighties who really sold this new way of [00:13:00] life and this new type of economy pretty strongly actually, um, presented it as almost an um. Almost a sort of ideological religion. Yeah. Friedman said, you know, this is a new faith. And one of the more seductive aspects of this was that, you know, people were, were, were taught to kind of like strive for that beautiful, perfect life.

That sort of heavenly existence of the Cleaver family. Where, where the man could do work at in an office didn't need to get Dirty Ward Cleaver for those who, um, know, leave it to Beaver, the show from, I, you know, I think it was in the fifties and sixties mainly. Um, but he was the son of a farmer. I. Who, who left the land because he was like, this is getting very hard.

This is difficult. There's much easier work in the city. Um, and I can provide for my family, and we can all like, live very clean, tidy, uh, lives, you know, and the, and the wife in this picture stays home and [00:14:00] she becomes the, the consumer of the family. Right? Right. And this was sold as the, the, the beautiful best way of life.

But I, I dwell on Freedman a bit in the book because this literally had kind of like, it, it's like a false religion in a way. You've got this heavenly picture, right, of the perfect lifestyle. Then you're told that if you, if, if you don't achieve that, it's because you have somehow. More or less sinned against the system.

You're not well prepared. You haven't made smart choices. You, you, you don't know how to pivot quickly enough. Um, and it, and, and, or you're just not intellectually capable of dealing with it, and that's your fault. So then you have to make amends by trying to figure out how to adjust. Well, I mean, if you can feel kind of like the lack of social bonding, even when I say that, right?

Mm-hmm. That instead of, instead of saying, we care about you and if we're gonna trans transform [00:15:00] this economy, we need to actually like, anticipate that you're gonna be hurt and therefore do something about that. But because we care about you, basically, instead, people were blamed for sitting against the system and then kind of criminalized and put down if they had any of the pathologies that tend to grow up around this.

Like, I don't know, alcoholism, mental illness, drug abuse, you know? Um, so it, it's been a very, we have a very punitive view of failure, even though. Our society, and particularly our government, encouraged that transformation in our agricultural system, which I tend to think is making us less secure. And, and the new way of life hasn't necessarily made anybody more happy.

Andrew Camp: No, no. And there's that anxiety on both sides, you know, and I think for younger people like myself who came into the workforce 2004 to 2008, you know, um, you know, it's been [00:16:00] hard. It's been a challenge, um, you know, for, I think, you know, both sides. And, and you do. What I'd like about your work is you're not putting blame just on one side.

You're saying, Hey, both, both sides are at work in this, you know, but how from this, you know, rural aspect, which you know, like you point out, is tends towards conservatism. How did this then give rise to christian nationalism or this populism that we're seeing played out today in in the current administration, I.

Laurie Johnson: Well, oh, that's, that, that is a big question. Yeah. Because I cannot, nobody can totally answer that. No. Because this has a sort of psychological dimension that's, that's hard to, um, that's hard to fully, um, encapsulate. But one of the things that I do is I look at the psychological dynamics of cult formation.

Okay. And you know how cult cults, and I don't mean this [00:17:00] like to be people, people take this to mean, I'm saying like all, um, sort of like right wing churches are cults. I'm not saying that exactly, but I'm saying there are cult-like dimensions to people's attraction to those types of churches. Um, when people are attracted to cults, they're usually vulnerable, lost looking for meaning, um, uh, confused.

And they will join. A movement or a church or whatever it is, because that movement or church is telling them that they have a lot of answers and that they can provide for them a sense of community and belonging and meaning and purpose and a direction, a plan, you know? Yeah. Um, in order to like, get them out of their situation.

And there are aspects to it that are always good. People do. Then when they join, join the political movement or the [00:18:00] religion, they, um, feel like they belong and they get social support. Right. Um, in fact, it's, I've talked to many, um, ex evangelicals or, um, you know, people leaving the tr um, sort of traditional, um, evangelical church.

When they leave that situation, they are usually, they feel kind of isolated, abandoned, they're often ostracized. They lose, um. They lose the sense of belonging. Sometimes they lose their jobs. I've talked to people who have, you know, they got their jobs through their connection with the church, so then they, they lose their jobs.

So, but anyway, I think once, once a person is in a movement or a group like that, there's a great tendency to wanna stay. Partly because of the sense of belonging, partly for fear of losing it. And then you become very susceptible to being, to like absorbing messages that you otherwise might sort of [00:19:00] question.

You know, like you could say, well, I like belonging here, but I don't think you're totally right about whatever it is. You know, like mm-hmm. Back in the covid period, it was, it was, it was masking. That was a huge deal. And just anti, you know, not, not not wanting people to get vaccinated and such. And you know, normally a person might say, well, I'm gonna look at, you know, I'm gonna look at everything myself and kind of make a decision for myself.

But once you're in that situation, it becomes pretty hard to differ because everybody you're around says this. Now, as far as why pastors and movement leaders. Tend to like do this to people. It's because I believe that there are people in the world that, um, basically know how to take advantage of the fact that people are vulnerable.

So I focus in my book quite a bit on the leadership. I don't blame so much the followers in this situation 'cause they really are [00:20:00] having problems. They're find, they're trying to find a solution, but the, I believe that the people at the top very often know exactly what they're doing and they're aggrandizing off of it.

Whether it's a, you know, a megachurch pastor mm-hmm. That is obviously wealthy and is, you know, you know, doing these things. Or it's a political leader who's obviously not very Christian, but is using, um, the dynamics that I've talked about to get what he wants. So I, you know, other people would argue with me about that, but I, I, I would say that some of those leaders exhibit sociopathic tendencies and they then basically see this great opportunity and they take it.

Yeah.

Andrew Camp: No, and again, I think it goes back, you know, having been involved in the evangelical world my whole life and studied, you know, in some aspects, right? Like, you know, as [00:21:00] the church loses influence and a political leader promises regaining that influence, you know, there's that lust for power. Like again, capitalism breeds in us something that we long for, of a lust for more, you know, like you mentioned that capitalism creates unnecessary spending by creating unnecessary desires.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. You know, and I, you know, and I think that spending, whether it's monetary or socially, like we're all looking to gain something from other people. And if I can prey as a leader on your insecurities, it only will fuel my desires.

Laurie Johnson: Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's a very good point that you made about capitalism's the, the products that we buy too.

Um, it's a milder version of, of the whole cult-like dynamic, right? Yeah. Every product is presented to us as this is going to bring you peace or happiness or wealth, um, but [00:22:00] it's going to do more than, it's gonna make you feel good about yourself and it's gonna elevate your life experience, whether it's, you know, your shampoo or whether it's a new car, it doesn't matter.

That is the way Madison Avenue was built and basically it's promising us something that only God can provide. Mm-hmm. Right? I mean, that's a big point in my book. We are being deviated from seeking God and the peace that we can only get through our relationship with God and how that feels with other people who are genuinely in relationship with God.

Um, and. And the commercial economy as well as these political leaders prey on that and promise you something that is not God. That's basically mammon. Yeah. Um, and we are therefore then worshiping false gods. I mean, this is something that Christians have been told, you know, throughout the decades. Beware of worshiping false gods and that, you know, products can be false, gods [00:23:00] celebrities can be false gods politicians can, but people aren't, they don't hear it well. It, it's very, very hard to hear it and then change your life accordingly, because the whole system that we're surrounded with encourages the opposite of that. So people become very confused and they think, this is my religion. You know, I should, I, if I'm following, you know, the big orange man, you know, I am basically, uh, I don't know what I'm supposed to refer to him as, but like, then, then I'm doing, God, I, I am literally kind of following God or mm-hmm.

You know, God's man. Yeah. So this is the mistake that we make, um, which is very unfortunate for Christianity. And I think young people, the, the people that are the age of my students, it's really turning them off to our faith.

Andrew Camp: Yeah, yeah. No, for sure. For sure. You know, and you were mentioning as you're talking and as I was preparing for this reading your book, I just finished also, [00:24:00] um, Malcolm Foley's book.

He's a black, um, pastor and historian who works at Baylor. Um, but he wrote the anti greed gospel and how the Worship of Mammon and is actually lying at the heart of racism. And, um, you, you're in his podcast are actually gonna come out two weeks apart and I think they actually will have some similar themes.

Um, that's great. You know, and, but you know, like, 'cause you'd mentioned that once we're in the system of capitalism, we're actually no longer free to choose to, to compete like it is, like it's the air we breathe and so, you know. Right. You know, and I think then religions, whether, you know, whatever religion, I think can fall prey to the allure of capitalism.

Like we're all competing for people's attention. And so how can I get people's attention? Like, you know, we sometimes resort to low means, um, our base desires. Mm-hmm.

Laurie Johnson: Well, when you think [00:25:00] about it, we are, whether we're, you know, um, hourly wage laborers or whether we are professionals, um, or honestly even people who mainly live on a, on a trust fund that's invested in the stock market.

We are all kind of at a. Subconscious level, I think at least aware that we rely for our very lives on this very, very complex economy and the government that's huge and unfathomable, that supports it and that we are real powerless so that, you know, if I'm a wage labor, I could be outta my job at any moment because like capitalism has moved on to another product or means of production.

Or you know, if I am a professional, which is occurring right now in my own field, automation is going to like eliminate certain jobs and we're gonna have consolidations. And nobody cares about the [00:26:00] liberal arts because they don't help with the economy anymore. And, and, and then even if you're like a retiree and you have quite a bit of money, or you're living on a trust fund, your one stock market crash away from poverty.

And we don't have any like. There's two things that people used to be able to fall back on more. Um, their own ability to EA living off the land so that they could feed themselves somehow and house themselves, and then other people in social networks that are healthy and intact that you can say, Hey, can we band together and, and help each other survive here?

So we are really kind of naked in the face of this system, and, and we may not, you know, the, the other, the ideology that says it's just, it's your fault. You need to work harder, it will happen. That kind of interferes, I think, with our ability to see just how vulnerable we are. But that underlying anxiety lends itself to us moving towards [00:27:00] these, um, more or less these like false religions that promise us this thing that we long for.

Andrew Camp: No, it's true. And I think, you know, myself identifying more liberal and, you know, listeners, if you're more liberal, like we feel the anxiety, right? Like, I sell wine for a living, you know, and I just saw a news article right before recording this podcast that Trump is threatening 200% tariffs on, you know, French and probably Italian wines, you know, which would wreak havoc on this industry, right?

Like mm-hmm. Um, you know, and so the, my anxiety goes up, you know, and so now my base desires are to blame everybody else, you know, which will lead me towards further isolationism. So I think on both sides, we're fearing this anxiety of the loss and the, you know, the lack of control we have. Um,

Laurie Johnson: absolutely, yeah, the lack of control that we have, and we [00:28:00] can't seem to formulate a plan that, that can overcome it.

So you're, you know, you feel like you're in this extreme. Extremely vulnerable state. Um, there's a term that I use in the book that I, I borrowed from another scholar, but the term is precarious. Hmm. Um, the precarious is, is a large group of people. They're divided by all the different occupations and walks in life.

Um, but a great mass of people is in the precarious simply because of that, that feeling of precarity that you're talking about, you know, like somebody's decision, um, at the global scale, economic scale, you know, to like fight back against, for whatever reason, the French and the Italians is now could, like crush my business.

Right. Could make people stop drinking wine, um, or not be able to afford to drink wine because they're also dealing with all these other things that they can't control. And yeah, like the anxiety, [00:29:00] I. And the alienation, you don't feel like you're a member of a community or a family. If you are being, you literally feel like you're being attacked,

Andrew Camp: right?

Laurie Johnson: Yeah. You know? Yeah.

Andrew Camp: Yeah. Um, so we're seeing it on both sides, but you, you thankfully don't leave us hanging, right? Like, you, you do provide a, an alternative rooted, you know, in Dorothy Day and the Catholic worker movement of, uh, you know, the, the early 1930s, forties, if I'm remembering my Dorothy Day history correctly.

Um, you know, and so what, what is the role then of Christian community, you know, and how can, apart from sort of this right wing Christian nationalism, like for those of us seeking community in this time that's looking for something better.

Laurie Johnson: Mm-hmm.

Andrew Camp: Where, where can we point, where can you point us towards, you know, and again, I realize it's a big question without a good, easy answer.

But [00:30:00] we also need to look for ways of belonging in this season of anxiety and right dislocation.

Laurie Johnson: Well, um, to kind of briefly explain the, the Catholic worker Movement was born from the, um, the action of two figures, Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin. Um, and they were dealing with the crisis of the Great Depression in the cities where there are so much unemployment.

And so, Peter Maurin in particular, was inspired by the idea of, um, workers, um, cooperating with each other, forming, um, on the one hand, these like groups, reading groups and discussion groups so that they could understand what was going on better, right? Rather than being so lost and just confused. And then also they created houses of hospitality to, um, help the homeless and people who just needed food and shelter.

And they also worked on creating, um. Farms typically on the [00:31:00] outskirts of urban areas where workers, um, who were dispossessed could go and cooperate with each other, um, to try to like live off the land. Those weren't too successful because people didn't know how to do that work. They were thoroughly kind of, um, conditioned by the urban, the urban, um, you know, factory labor and that type of labor environment.

But the thought was that. Christians should directly act. They shouldn't not that I, this is not to badmouth government action because, I mean, I think it's gonna become pretty clear that at this point in time we need government action to soften the blow of our economic system. But, but at that time, there really wasn't a whole lot of recourse to government.

So they felt like they needed to do it themselves, and they thought this was the Christian responsibility. Um, and so direct action. In fact, they, uh, they lived involuntary poverty. They basically, you know, sought what money they, they could [00:32:00] to keep the operation going from other people, but. Um, but they sort of embrace voluntary poverty in, in solidarity with the poor.

Um, you know, I think that, uh, one should, no, no one should live in poverty. Um, yeah, so I, I don't think that, um, anybody should gLauriefy voluntary poverty. Um, but I can kind of see where they were coming from at the time. Um, so. In my book, I, I don't argue that that direct Christian action can substitute for what we are basically losing right now with the peeling back of all these programs of support because there's so many people now in our society, there's sort, sort of barely hanging on, um, that the withdrawal is just gonna make too many people.

We're gonna be in a situation of, um, where a lot of people are going to need a lot of help. Um, I don't think that just Catholic worker communities can do [00:33:00] that. I think that they're a model of what Christians should do and how they should think in a situation like this. So churches and I place quite a bit of emphasis on churches, I believe for a long time.

They've sort of succumbed to this idea that, well, we can write a check to the church and then the church will, you know, pay for services or they'll, you know, we'll have a food bank or something like that, and that's our Christian action. Whereas what we really need is, is first of all, we need to, like, actually, in our churches, we need to support ourselves each other.

Mm-hmm. Which we do not do very well. No, we do not. No, it just, we come to church, we worship, we go home on a good week. Right? Yeah. Um, and we don't like, think of each other as people who can like come to each other's aid and work together and share. So we could be doing that. We could be, you know, cooperatively growing food, if that's what we wanted to do, sharing the things that we have so that not everybody [00:34:00] in our church has to buy everything or go into debt.

Yeah. If we can, maybe we should be asking somebody to, to live with us, to come into our home. Right now I have a person, um, living in my basement apartment that is trying to pay off his student debt and is, wouldn't be able to ever do it without basically having some free rent, some sort of uplift. Right.

And in exchange for, for that, he, um, gives me some help with running my household with, you know, mowing my lawn and stuff like that. Yeah. So if you can do things like that, um, these things are harder to do in the sense that you have to deal more directly with other people. And I think that's why we're, because we're so alienated now, and we're so used to, you know, well, you should just have the money to pay for that, or I'll give you money to pay for that, that, that we're uncomfortable dealing with other people.

Yeah. And then the [00:35:00] next level of that type of action would be. Trying to run some sort of house of hospitality or, um, a, you know, a warming center where people can come every night and sleep if they're out and homeless. And actually, you know, part of the tradition is personalism, which is literally, you've gotta see these people, not as charity cases, but as your fellow human beings.

Somebody that you would want to be in your church. Somebody that could be a, a. A member, a productive member of your community, especially if you're helping each other out more and you don't need money as much, then a poor piece person is just as valuable as a rich person. Yeah. Right. You know, so, so if you take money outta the equation, suddenly they become valuable and not somebody to look down upon.

And I do think that Christians need to do that and, and I just challenge them to do it. Do do it in any way. They don't have to go big. Right. The Catholic worker, you know, kind of like dedicates their life and [00:36:00] risks their future in order to live in voluntary poverty in a hospital. Right. Hospitality. But you, you don't wanna put them up on a pedestal and say, oh, well they're the saints.

They'll do the work for us. We need to think about what we can do in our, where we're at right now to change this dynamic so that we are working with each other. I. If I could depend more on my chur, my fellow church members and my neighbors, I wouldn't need as much money. I would feel more security. I wouldn't feel so precarious, and maybe I wouldn't be as likely to join some sort of, you know, kind of like ultra radical right wing movement that is basically an anger and resentment movement.

Yeah. As a result.

Andrew Camp: Wow. Um, again, there's so many themes that you're touching on that I think of what Malcolm touched on of, you know, like the solidarity. You know, we, like you said, we've, we write checks to the poor or we write checks to a food bank, but we don't [00:37:00] think about the issues of hunger and the systemic problems with the system.

Mm-hmm. Um, you know, are we go and we, we serve the poor for a day and then we, we come back. Um, you know, and again, those are good steps that I think beginning steps, right? Like, I don't wanna minimize those steps, but how do we move towards solidarity with people? Right. Maybe it's,

Laurie Johnson: maybe it's doing one thing, like proposing to your church to, um, do a cooperative daycare center.

Right. Or, you know, reaching out to one neighbor and saying, Hey, would you like to work on this? I've got a, um, I've got a backyard. You don't, would you like to, you know, grow some things here with me? Mm-hmm. I don't know. There's so many different possibilities and I, I do think that church leaders ought to try to encourage that and coordinate it rather than having individuals kind of haphazardly go about it, as good as those steps can be.

Andrew Camp: Right.

Laurie Johnson: Great. If we could organize more.

Andrew Camp: For sure. Yeah. [00:38:00] Um, because, you know, again, if we as Jesus followers take Jesus's words in the words of the New Testament author, seriously, like there is a desire that God's people share things in common so that no one is lacking or no one is need, that there's equality, uh, you know, equal distribution of resources and uh, you know, right. Like we say as evangelicals, like we are people of God's word. But when it comes to the economic issues of belonging, it seems like we sometimes have a harder time wanting to, um, enter more fully into that. And I speak as one who struggles too with it, right?

Like, you know, I have a family, I have young girls, like we're, what does it mean to, to take care of my family, but also then look towards the larger community and mm-hmm. You know, and not sacrifice one for the other. You know, there's, those are big questions to ask,

Laurie Johnson: right? Yeah. I mean, maybe for those of us who do have [00:39:00] a decent income, maybe it is to, in effect, I mean, for some people to give less of it to nonprofit organizations.

Mm-hmm. And to keep some of it, and use it directly to provide. Um, you know, in your own home or elsewhere for some sort of community need a, a lot of times we, you know, select what we're gonna give our financial resources to, to the nonprofit for the, you know, um, not just for the tax deduction, but it seems to have this aura of legitimacy around it that we've adopted, right?

Where it may be that you are some family member, right? You know, needs a place to stay or could use a car that you could buy or, you know, so there's, there's also that, right. But I think that the, the thing that gets in the way, as you pointed out, first of all, like we're all so pressed for time because we all have to work full-time now.

Right. Um, you know, to the partners in the marriage, both of them are [00:40:00] working. Right. Um, and I'm not an advocate of like the traditional family, you know, coming, I'm not an advocate of that. Right. But I would just point out that, you know, the economy at a certain point during the Cleaver era gave us the potential advantage that, you know, people could work halftime.

Yeah. And, and then they could spend the rest of the time taking care of their family and maybe once again, being able to take care of their extended family, which people used to do. Right. Right. And, and now we can't do that. So then, but we've got this money that we've made, so then we, we give that to somebody else to try, try to take care of people.

So I, I, you know, it's tough. It's tough to, to make any sort of change because of that, because you don't have a lot of time. Um, and I guess that's why I say to start small. Mm-hmm. And just try something. The other obstacle is honestly, we just don't wanna do work. You know, if [00:41:00] you worked all day, um, and then you're being asked to, you know, work, um, whether it's, you know, tending a garden Yeah.

Uh, you know, or taking care of somebody's kid mm-hmm. Or, you know, spending four or five hours with somebody's, um, elderly parents so they can go get some shopping done, um, or whatever it is. That is uncomfortable, not just because it might sometimes in, you know, physical work, which is particularly unattractive to us at this point in time, but also because it's like, again, dealing with other people.

You know, we have this other, this opposite tendency that's happening in our society where seems like especially young people are just holding up. In almost complete isolation because it's become so uncomfortable for them to just deal with even calling somebody on the phone. So, you know, asking them to make a connection with people, talk to them, work with them, that's super [00:42:00] hard.

Right. But I would challenge people to do it because it's literally life changing. Mm-hmm. And if you wanna meet God, you will meet him in your neighbor and in the people at the warming shelter, the homeless shelter, um, or in your home, when you invite him in, um, that's where you meet, where you can meet God.

I mean, there are other places you can meet God, but that's a pretty primary way. And so it can, and as you adjust to dealing with other people, they change your life. Right. And you, you're exposed to new, you know, new people, new ways of life, new thoughts. And it's exciting. It's, it's scary, but it's exciting.

Andrew Camp: No, for sure. Yeah. Like in this. Era where we're, we're, we're all looking for belonging. Whatever side of the political spectrum, the religious spectrum we're falling on, we're all looking for belonging. And I think what you're pointing out is that our belonging's gonna be found when we actually reach out [00:43:00] beyond our comfort zone.

Invite those people we may not otherwise think we would belong to, and see how they may act, you know, to see Jesus in them. Like Jesus is going to show up for us in that stranger. Um, yes.

Laurie Johnson: And Jesus will show up for them in us. Yeah. And, and then, you know, your, your relationship with God will, will, will be more cemented and, and that better relationship with God is our shield against being susceptible to this, these ideological movements, to the, the worldly temptations to, you know, go off on these, on these very dangerous tangents. My dad, if you have the time, I, I will give my dad as an example of this type of Yeah. Um, thing. He is almost 98. He'll be 98 in, um, April. And, um, he, we lost mom like, I think about three years ago now.

Um, and [00:44:00] he's always been like this, but he ramped it up, right? He's of sound minded body. And so what he does is things like, he grows, he, he's like Mr. Tomato man, so he grows tons of tomatoes in his yard and he grows other stuff as well. And then we have a community garden plot that we work on together, and he gives this stuff away to our neighbors, um, and they love him.

And so they, in the winter time spontaneously will come with food for him. Wow. Ladies will come with dishes of food. Um, sometimes it's food that they made with some of the stuff like his rhubarb. He gets a rhubarb pie bag. He goes around to um, uh, there's a hospice in town. He routinely two or three times a week, goes over there and has conversations with people in hospice and at the, um, assisted living facility that are having a very hard time with getting people to visit.

Um, and so, you know, [00:45:00] he, he's, in other words, he's constantly developing relationships. Now he wants to go down and have at least one weekly meal with the people who we have like a weekly community meal program in a centralized location. Yeah. And what he wants to do is go and sit down and have a meal with 'em instead of serving on the other side.

Which is good too. Yeah. But he wants to actually, like, have conversations with 'em 'cause he finds that to be like fun and interesting. That's, so, he's a model for this type of thing. His life has been so enriched that I literally think that's why he's still alive.

Andrew Camp: Right. And at 98 to be able to go out and, and find life, you know?

Mm-hmm. What a, that's so cool. Like, may we all be nine, you know, your dad at 98.

Laurie Johnson: Yeah. He's my role model, and he lives right next door to me. So I get to see this every day. It's amazing. And his life is full, and he still has joy, even though he's combating old age, you know? [00:46:00] Yeah. His hearing's not as good and so on, and, but it's what keeps him going.

Andrew Camp: Wow. That's so cool. So, yeah, again, a small step, you know, and like you said, he's, he's tamped it up even with the loss of his lifelong partner, you know, to mm-hmm. You know, um, what, what joy, uh, right. Thank you for sharing that story.

Laurie Johnson: Yeah. Yeah, I love him very much. And our community is a little bit stronger and tighter because of that.

And the more that we know each other, the more we'll respect each other and not demonize each other.

Andrew Camp: Right. No, it's true. Um, I loved the last paragraph, like it of your book. Um, I, you know, I think it was such a rich paragraph. Uh, I don't wanna read the whole thing, but, um, you had this one sentence, um, 'cause I think it fits in with what you're saying here.

You, you wrote that it, it is literally easier to riot than to man a community garden. Our harder still live in [00:47:00] full cooperation with members of your family, your church, and your neighbors, and become more interdependent and therefore more economically and psychologically independent. Thereby, uh, I, I feel like, but you also say that it's one of the hardest things we can ever do.

Like, you know, this, this idea, this communal interdependent living.

Laurie Johnson: It's hard because of all the factors I've mentioned, but it's, it's, you can never overestimate the power of the economy. And I'll give you another example. I work with, um, people in Kansas City who run this, um, urban farm there. It's a Catholic worker farm.

Yeah. And I've helped to fix up. A house next door to them. And then we've got a, a pretty big garden plot across the street. Um, and our original vision in which we still want to pursue is that we would grow food for, you know, some of it would go to like people who wanted to buy it in the area through a food bank, [00:48:00] um mm-hmm.

A food hub that would kind of be able to distribute it and part of it would go to people with food insecurity that didn't get enough fresh food. We got stymied by the fact that, um, charitable organizations in the area that wanted to distribute food were hooked on commercial food that was packaged and or precooked and you know, they could just take as, because the, the grocery stores, um, wanna give away that food, uh, or they get a tax deduction for it.

And again, I don't wanna like discourage that 'cause a lot of people are living on that. Yeah. But basically we could not find a way to like, to give the produce away. It was not particularly wanted and it was not understood. Right. So we're still working on that. I think if we just work directly with food banks where people can come and shop Yeah.

Um, we will be able to do it. And [00:49:00] actually right now we're searching, searching for an intern to kind of help us with, with that type of gardening and moving over to kind of more like. Not so immediately perishable vegetables that could be given in that way. Right. But, you know, faced with that and then just faced with we're in an urban environment that is, you know, it's, it's underserved in so many ways.

It's hard to get people to come there and, and live there and wanna engage in that work. And in this, the case of this type, type of work, it is hard physical work. Yeah. You know? Um, but, um, but also it keeps you fit and healthy at the same time. Yeah. You know? Yep. So, so you, you have to get used to that type of thing.

Right. Used to all of that. But then doing something like that can just. It can change your entire life. So I really do challenge people at the end, do something. You may not wanna do that, but [00:50:00] do something rather than kind. We're so set in our grooved ways. Right. You know, and then we focus on the news, like, oh my gosh, you know, like, but you know, as much as we do need to know what's going on, just listening to the news and having opinions about it doesn't change anything.

Andrew Camp: No. Mm-hmm.

Laurie Johnson: Yeah.

Andrew Camp: Yeah. No, and I, I love that word. And that's starting small. And, um, yeah, for me, just to share an anecdote, like I, I met with the sort of director, CEO of our local food bank this week. Just, okay, what, what's going on? Like, how, you know, what, what's being done? You know, like they do great work, you know, giving food out, but like, are there conversations happening about like the larger systemic issues of food insecurity and.

Where can I help in that role or what, you know, where can I volunteer? You know? And so it's, you know, my passion for food and the table, like that's where it's leading me, [00:51:00] you know, to reach out, you know, and what that looks like. And, um, not quite sure yet, but like, it's, it's taking that first step, um, you know, and it, and it was beneficial.

Laurie Johnson: Yeah. Like there's a, there, there's an operation in Lawrence, Kansas, I wanna say, where people are organized to actually, um, produce food on, you know, a, a farm. Uh, I think it's probably more like a large garden. And then they have a kitchen and they make, they, they basically go from farm to table. Wow. Um, and, and then that kitchen is, that is kind of like a restaurant for anybody that wants to come in.

It's, they don't check for need or anything. Anybody can come in, um, and enjoy a meal. And that process creates like an incredible community amongst those people. And a context where they can meet up with people that may be food insecure, but they're also just cool, interesting people. Yeah. Um, who can [00:52:00] be a part of that community.

Um, so that kind of thing is, I, I would encourage. Right. And maybe like churches actually organizing. That type of arrangement rather than just taking, you know, canned goods. And we often give like the worst food to the poor.

Andrew Camp: yeah. Empty calories full of processed, um, yeah. And how, yeah, again, how to address the bigger issue of giving them food that is healthy or, and then allowing them to choose, giving them the, the freedom to choose and to be a human being who has agency in the matter versus.

Hey, here's what we have. I don't know what you can do with it, but good luck.

Laurie Johnson: Exactly. Right. Like asking them what they want first. And it needs to be culturally sensitive too, right? So if you live in a largely Hispanic area, you should make sure you know what you're growing and you should be including people in the area, in the decision making and in the production of it, [00:53:00] right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So a lot of times we don't do that and, and in our food drives we're like, oh, here's a can of beans, here's some tuna, whatever, you know, or, um, things that are just completely junk food too, right? Um, yeah. It's, it's demeaning to people to treat them that way. Yeah. It really is. It's so, we need to become more sensitive to that.

What you put, what you give people in the way of food, what kind of table you present to people, it tells them what you think of them.

Andrew Camp: Mm-hmm. And that's where that solidarity, I think, um, that word just keeps popping up. The idea of being in solidarity versus them being just a charity case or mm-hmm. You know, a place we write a check or serve for a couple hours.

Laurie Johnson: Right. And then all of that type of activity builds actual community, which is the first step towards rational organization. [00:54:00] Yeah. Against major political upheavals. Right, right. Like, unless you have that cohesion and you really understand each other and you understand the problems that you face, how will you ever organize against, you know, these, well, the destructive things that are occurring right now.

Andrew Camp: Mm-hmm.

Laurie Johnson: Where do you, you have to start there.

Andrew Camp: Yeah. Uh, this has been a lively conversation. A lot to unpack, I think more that could be said. Um, really appreciate your, your wisdom. Uh, but it's a question I'd love to wrap up with and I've asked all my guests, um, what's the story you want the church to tell?

I.

Laurie Johnson: Hmm. Well, I like that early church story, right? When, when Christians were first starting out and they didn't have a lot of money and they were persecuted, they were a minority. Mm-hmm. Um, and they really did have to help each other, um, and, you know, [00:55:00] brave situations that, um, that, that they couldn't predict and that were often pretty dire.

Yeah. But they believed enough in what they were doing that they persevered, they had a direct relationship with God, you know, that, um, spurred them on. And I think we need to re reconnect to that. And we need to feel that we are. Like them. Mm-hmm. We aren't just members of an organization where we get sort of served a message and it's almost like we're clients of a church, you know, receiving absolution and then going home, but that we are literally, I.

Like them. And more and more we're in a situation of adversity because for the most part, people either think that they, you know, either think badly of c of Christians because of the political dynamics in our country. Um, or, you know, the Christians that we do interact with are not interested in this and are kind of almost hostile.[00:56:00]

Well, they are hostile in some cases. Um, and so we are kind of like a smaller group, um, that is, um, living in very difficult times. That may even lead to persecution. If you disagree enough with, with what's going on, we should reconnect with that, um, that old kind of like daring, convicted, uh, mentality. Um, and start relying on each other.

Yeah, like, um. I don't know what else to say. I just feel strongly that we've moved away from that. Mm-hmm. And that we need to get back to it and remember how tough these people were and they were even willing to risk their lives.

Andrew Camp: Yeah. Yeah. No, for sure. I love that word. Um, and then some fun questions, you know, to wrap up about food since, you know, I love food.

Uh, what's one food you refuse to eat?

Laurie Johnson: Oh, well, I, I have, I, [00:57:00] um, I don't like having fish with their heads on. I wouldn't say I refuse to eat it. Um, maybe like I've never had brains of any kind. That's probably a reason why. Yeah. Just like, you know. Yeah. Like, but I'm, I'm actually pretty adventuresome when it comes to food.

Andrew Camp: Okay. Nice. That's fair. You know. Um, what's one of the best things you've ever eaten?

Laurie Johnson: Oh, I like, well, so one of my favorite foods be maybe because of my southern heritage is Catfish fried with, um, in corn. Corn meal, yeah. Yeah. And collards. Mm-hmm. So actually I made a video. I, it's not public because I, I don't wanna be seen as like a person who's doing cooking shows, but for our Patreon followers, I made a video of, um, me cooking catfish and collards.

So I love that. Okay. And then of course, I do love a good steak. I mean, honestly, you know, I can't help it.

Andrew Camp: Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Fair. Um, [00:58:00] and then finally, there's a conversation among chefs about last meals. Like as in, if you knew you had one last meal to enjoy, what would it be? And so for Laurie, what, what might be on your table if you knew you only had one last meal?

Laurie Johnson: Man, that is tough. I actually think it might be the, so it'd be the catfish, the collards with the, um, bacon and balsamic vinegar. It'd probably be like a side of okra. Um, and I don't know, a good, I mean, honestly a very good cocktail. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Or maybe a great beer, you know, maybe an IPA, but yeah. Or two if the case would be, if it was my last meal.

Andrew Camp: Gotcha. Do you have a, do you have a spirit of choice for a cocktail? Like do you, do you venture towards one side or the other, or?

Laurie Johnson: I like gin and tonics for cocktail and anything that's kind of like, also herbal. I don't like sweet. I don't really like sweet drinks. And I will take a, like a [00:59:00] straight, you know, scotch or whiskey too.

Right. I don't like a lot of like, mixtures with a lot of sugar in 'em. No. Um, I also like a good like, um, red wine, like pinot, no noir or, or something like that for sure. Um, and then IPAs are like my favorite beers.

Andrew Camp: Okay. Fun. Do you have a favorite IPA, like local or inter, you know, national?

Laurie Johnson: Um, no. I mean, Tallgrass has, the Tallgrass local brand here has some decent IPAs.

Okay. And there's one called Eight Bit that I kind of tend to favor, but you know, like I'm still roaming around trying to, you know, find the best. IPA.

Andrew Camp: Yeah. No, I, I'm with you a good, IPA, um, and some friends, you know, some other wine reps we were just gathering yesterday and they had four bottles of Pliny the Elder.

Mm. Um, which is from the Russian River Valley Brewing Company, I believe. But it was just so, and it's a highly sought after limited allocated, um, [01:00:00] IPA, but just so clean and crisp and you're like, oh. A really good IPA that's done well is just, oh,

Laurie Johnson: what was it called again?

Andrew Camp: It's called Pliny the Elder.

Laurie Johnson: Okay. I am gonna have to remember that and give it a try.

'cause I have, we have a local store that gets an awful lot of, I wouldn't be surprised if they either have it or they could get it in. So I'll try that. 'cause I do like that it's, it's because it's, um, um, an IPA is just really refreshing. Yep. It doesn't weigh you down. No. It doesn't make you feel Yeah. Full.

Andrew Camp: Yeah. No, and I don't, I don't want the double triple IPAs. I like, you know, I don't need a heavy beer. Right. Yeah. But nor do I want to drink Bud Light.

Laurie Johnson: No way. Never again. When I was in college, we had a beer called Shafer. Okay. No, no. Well, it's like old Milwaukee or one of those types of beers. Yeah. And people would drink it just, just because it was plentiful and cheap.

And, and there was a point when I was in my upper [01:01:00] twenties even, where I was like, Nope, nope, nope. Not gonna ever do that again. I, I can afford a decent, um, you know, and if I can't, well I just won't have one.

Andrew Camp: Yeah, for sure. Yep. Life's too short to drink bad alcohol.

Laurie Johnson: Absolutely. Absolutely. And I do love to just sit out on my balcony on a nice spring day.

Like, I think today's gonna be where we've got a lot of sun.

Andrew Camp: Hmm.

Laurie Johnson: And have a glass, a glass of wine that is so relaxing.

Andrew Camp: Yeah. It's. Sounds delightful. We're supposed to get snow in Flagstaff, like I mentioned earlier today, and so wish I could sit out on our porch and just enjoy spring weather someday.

Laurie Johnson: Yeah, maybe not today, but soon.

Andrew Camp: Yep, soon. Well, Laurie, this has just been a delight. I really have enjoyed your wisdom, your historical insight into this moment we're living in, and so if people want. To connect more or learn more about what you're doing, where, where can they find you?

Laurie Johnson: So, um, I am a president of something called the Maurin Academy, and that's spelled M-A-U-R-I-N.

Mm-hmm. [01:02:00] Um, and they can go to, um, p Maurin.org or just search for the Maurin Academy and they'll find our website. And from there we've got like a whole tab for classes of different kinds. Okay. And one of the best ways to hook up with us is to get on our Patreon, we have the free level, and then we have three other levels that we'll get you into reading groups, classes, um, and we have a speaker series, so.

Awesome. Yeah. There's, there's a lot of ways.

Andrew Camp: Yep. And we'll make sure that, that's all in the show notes as well as your, um, YouTube channel so people can. Uh, learn more that way. Thank you. Thank you. Um, and if you've enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing, leaving a review or sharing it with others.

Thanks for joining us on this episode of the biggest Table, where we explore what it means to be transformed by God's love around the table and through food. Until next time, bye.