The Subtext: Hookup Culture, Power, and Love

**Lee C. Camp** (0:00)
Hi, Lee.

**Savannah Locke** (0:00)
Welcome to our show.

**Lee C. Camp** (0:01)
Hello, Savannah. Good afternoon to you.

**Savannah Locke** (0:05)
Lee, what I just realized is you have a city on your shirt, and I have a city on mine.

**Lee C. Camp** (0:10)
I do.

**Savannah Locke** (0:11)
Philadelphia and Florence.

**Lee C. Camp** (0:13)
Yes. Yeah, not Florence, Alabama.

**Savannah Locke** (0:16)
Not Florence.
Not to be confused with Florence, Alabama. Talk me through where you got that shirt.

**Lee C. Camp** (0:24)
In Florence, Italy.

**Savannah Locke** (0:26)
Did you really?

**Lee C. Camp** (0:27)
Yeah.

**Savannah Locke** (0:27)
And why were you there?

**Lee C. Camp** (0:29)
I was there. This was before I knew you, I guess.
I spent a semester teaching in Florence in the spring semester of 2024 with how many? Twelve students and living in a villa there for three months. And it was fantastic.

**Savannah Locke** (0:45)
Making sacrifices for the kingdom.

**Lee C. Camp** (0:47)
Sacrifices for the Lord. That's right.

**Savannah Locke** (0:49)
And what was your takeaway of Florence?

**Lee C. Camp** (0:52)
I love Florence. I would go back anytime I could go back.
It's an amazing city. It's just so remarkable. And I learned so much about European history, about art. It was just it was wonderful.

**Savannah Locke** (1:08)
Wait, what class did you teach?

**Lee C. Camp** (1:10)
Let's see. I taught I just taught a version of my join the Good Life class for like general education there. Yeah. And then I they had a wonderful art history professor from Florence. And so I would go to her class with the students.
And there was a class on kind of the culture of Florence and Italy that I also sat in on and attended.

**Savannah Locke** (1:34)
So isn't that magical?

**Lee C. Camp** (1:36)
It was great. I love it.

**Savannah Locke** (1:38)
Beautiful story behind the shirt Florence, Italy. My shirt came from a yard sale two weeks ago in Nashville.

**Lee C. Camp** (1:46)
I do. I love shirts with city names. Would you? Yeah. Maybe that could be something that people could send us. If they love us, they could send us t-shirts from their city and we'll wear it on the show.

**Savannah Locke** (1:59)
The way you just said that, though, made it seem like we've been sitting around thinking, what can our listeners send to us? And you're like, I've come up with a solution.

**Lee C. Camp** (2:10)
It just floated into my head and there we go.

**Savannah Locke** (2:14)
Yes, if we've given anything to you, then you want to give something back to us. City shirt names.

**Lee C. Camp** (2:22)
Yes, that's right. One of my other favorite shirts is a shirt from Bozeman, Montana that a student gave me one time.

**Savannah Locke** (2:30)
Have you been to Bozeman?

**Lee C. Camp** (2:31)
When I was a kid on a family vacation. Yeah. But yeah, so anyway.

**Savannah Locke** (2:35)
I love that. That could be a good bet, to be honest.

**Lee C. Camp** (2:37)
Yeah, that's right.

**Savannah Locke** (2:38)
Just every week us showing up in new shirts.

**Lee C. Camp** (2:40)
You just never know.

**Savannah Locke** (2:43)
Well, Lee, I wanted to, we haven't read reviews in a while, which Brandon, our listener from many months ago, told us to stop reading as many. And I really did take it to heart.

**Lee C. Camp** (2:51)
Apparently so.

**Savannah Locke** (2:51)
So it's been a while and I'm going to read one review.

**Lee C. Camp** (2:54)
Okay.

**Savannah Locke** (2:55)
That was very complimentary.
Okay. Kaelin, Kaelin Weddeking, which I just love that whole name. It's amazing. Kaelin said this about last week's episode.
I absolutely love this podcast. Thank you for the patience and nuance you bring to each conversation while sustaining your joyful light in the midst of tough and serious subjects. Would you be willing to discuss how a disciple living in modern America is to orient towards the nations in a virtuous and kingdom like way? I grew up in a patriotic family and now while watching the Fourth of July shows, I feel like a foreigner amidst all of these shows. On one side, the nationalists and the other, the consumer, which I thought was great feedback. Thank you. And a great question. Do you have any kind of like initial thoughts?

**Lee C. Camp** (3:42)
I have a lot of thoughts, but I would summarize it in terms of, I always think about one thing about patriotism. I always think about CS. Lewis. I think it was in Mere Christianity where he's talking about patriotism and he exalts it as a virtue and says that it gets us out of our own pity, paltry, self-centered individualistic because we care for the community. We care for something bigger than ourselves. I think there's something to that. I also always think of Tolstoy who said something like, why does anybody call patriotism a virtue? No one calls self-centeredness a virtue, and patriotism is but self-centeredness writ large. I think there's something to that as well. I think that if anyone is overly patriotic, it will really cause them a lot of concern, because being overly patriotic can get wrapped up in a disordered love for the country, disordered love for one's own people, and then you stop paying attention to the truth, and the failures, and the horrors even, of the story of your own nation.