Unabridged Interview: Lee C. Camp

**Jacob Lewis** (0:02)
I'm Jacob Lewis, and this is No Small Endeavor, exploring what it means to live a good life. This week, Lee C. Camp swaps chairs. He is our guest with theologian Russell Moore as host. They dig into Lee's most recent book, Scandalous Witness.
This conversation reimagines the ways that Christianity might truly serve the common good in a divided America, especially in an era of rising Christian nationalism.

**Lee C. Camp** (0:29)
Hello, friends. Lee C. Camp here. There is, as you may have noticed, no shortage of content in the world. Opinions, endless outrage, plentiful.
Deep wisdom and thoughtful perspective, slightly harder to come by. That's part of why we created the NSC Notebook. It's our weekly email from the world of No Small Endeavor, with reflections on a good life, behind the scenes insight into our interviews, and quotes that stuck with me long after those conversations ended. You'll also get a curated list of what I'm reading, watching and listening to books, movies, music, and other things I think are actually worth your time. It comes to your inbox every Tuesday, completely free. So if you'd like one less thing to doom scroll and one more thing to actually enjoy, sign up for the NSC Notebook at nosmallendeavor.com. When Laura and I had three young boys running around, we cared a lot about what our kids were reading, but like every parent, we learned pretty quickly that good intentions have to fit into real life. You want your kids getting the nutrients they need, but you also want to avoid all the extra sugar, artificial ingredients and things you can't even pronounce. That's one reason I like Hiya. Unlike a lot of kids' vitamins that are basically candy in disguise, Hiya's chewable multivitamin is made with zero sugar, zero gummy additives and no artificial junk. It includes a blend of organic fruits and vegetables plus essential vitamins and minerals like vitamin D, C, zinc, folate and B12.
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**Russell Moore** (2:52)
Hello, this is Russell Moore, sitting in for Lee C with Lee C this week. This is a usual thing for you to be on that side of the table. But I wanted to talk today with you about your new book. It's not new, but it's new coming out in paperback, Scandalous Witness, A Little Political Manifesto for Christians.
And I just have to say, Lee, when people are splitting up their families, they don't want to get together for Fourth of July weekend because they're afraid of how these political divisions are going to come up, why a book on politics at a time when people want to forget there's any such thing?

**Lee C. Camp** (3:38)
Yeah.
Well, I think one of the things that has driven me so much in the agenda, or I've wanted to drive the agenda of that book, is that we've tended to narrow politics to a very specific particular form of what we seem to mean by the word, namely, American partisan political engagement. Obviously, that's very hostile and increasingly belligerent today.
Yet, in the ancient older classical traditions, politics goes back the root of the word polis, which is just the word for city in Greek. The art and science of politics is simply asking the question, how should we arrange the affairs of our community? And those are questions that we can never escape, and they were always navigating, and they were always working with. And I'm trying to suggest that there are resources, theological resources, theological traditions, in the Christian tradition, which seem to have been obscured because of the partisan political stuff that can actually help us in the midst of our hostilities and help us in the midst of our belligerence, and say there are different possibilities for the way that we're going about these kinds of questions.

**Russell Moore** (4:56)
I can imagine somebody who is saying, look, the political part, fine, we can deal with that. It's the for Christians part, because when you say there are resources that can help, I think there are a lot of people who will say, well, haven't Christians helped enough? And you even acknowledged in the book that Christianity in America has become a bad public joke. What do you mean by that?