Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in Iran. My two guests today are Patrick Miller and Keith Simon co-authors of the recently released book Truth Over Tribe pledging allegiance to the Lamb, not the donkey or the elephant and Patrick and Keith also co-host a really fantastic podcast that I've been just gobbling up recently. It's called Truth Over Tribe. Same title as the book. And we had a wonderful conversation about a Christian political identity. These two guys are awesome. If you like Theology in Iran, you're going to absolutely love

Patrick and Keith and I definitely would encourage you to both pick up their book and go listen to the podcast Truth Over Tribe. It's really fantastic. So please welcome to the show for the first time, Patrick and Keith.

I am so excited about this podcast conversation. We're getting to know each other a little bit by two new friends. I'm just going to call you friends.

I think it's going to be a pretty, pretty sure case that we're going to be friends after this interview. Patrick and Keith, thanks for so much for coming on Theology in Iran.

We're glad to be here. I have been a big fan of your podcast, read a bunch of your books and excited to hang out with you for a while.

Absolutely.

Well, it's, it's extremely mutual and you guys got a really sexy studio over there and a really nice mic. So this is a, this is like a joint podcast.

And I have been absolutely loving your podcast. Like I just, I love, well, you even set off long. I've said it many times that, you know, Jesus is nonpartisan, but he's very, he is political.

Like the idea that, you know, as Christians don't get political, don't get political. It's like, no, the gospel is a political proclamation that Jesus is Lord Caesar is not that created lots of political waves in the first century.

So I, yeah, I don't like the language of like Jesus isn't political, but he's certainly not partisan. Can you just, I don't, who everyone's a start?

Tell your story and how specifically like how you came to understand the need for this to address tribalism in the church is just kind of a recent thing or something that has always kind of been on your guys's hearts.

Well, I'm the young one in this group. So I'm going to defer to my elder here and let him tell the story.

So, you know, it's interesting because we've all gotten caught up into tribalism one way or the other. I remember, and this is a long time ago, but I remember the 1992 election, I just become a Christian in college.

And I'm sitting in the backyard of a friend, we're watching the political returns come in. This is back when Newt Gingrich and that crew was trying to take back Congress from the Democrats.

And when they had declared the Republicans at one, I run around the backyard, whooping and hollering with my shirt off, waving it over my head.

He wasn't even drunk. I mean, that's the crazy part.

I totally sober guy.

And, and you know, that was a long time ago, but it captures this idea that I had fallen into that if Christians could just get the right people elected.

Then everything was going to be okay. That the main problem with the world is that one party wasn't in power. And if we could reverse that, all our problems would be solved.

And so all of us get sucked up into this kind of tribalistic political partisan way of thinking.

Absolutely. I mean, just like Keith, I am a recovering tribalist. I have a similar story, although my shirt stayed on the entire time.

In 2008, I was in college, Barack Obama came to speak at my university because back then our state was actually still a swing state. It's not anymore.

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