“The Deepest Parts of Our Humanity” ft. Washington University in St. Louis’ John Inazu I Saturdays at Seven Ep. 44 (The Legal Vocation: Part One of a Six Part Series)

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In the forty-fourth episode of the “Saturdays at Seven” conversation series, Todd Ream talks with John Inazu, the Sally D. Danforth Distinguished Professor of Law and Religion at Washington University in St. Louis. Inazu begins by discussing the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, why its components prove valuable to so many people, and why the debates surrounding those components may bespeak something positive about citizenship in the United States. Ream and Inazu then discuss Inazu’s commitment to the study and practice of law, how it emerged, and the mentors and readings that impacted it. Such an understanding of the practice and study of the law then led Inazu to write his recently released Learning to Disagree as well Uncommon Ground which Inazu co-authored with Tim Keller. Ream and Inazu then close their conversation talking about the academic vocation, Inazu’s understanding of such a calling, and the virtues that prove critical to its exercise.

• John Inazu’s Learning to Disagree: The Surprising Path to Navigating Differences with Empathy and Respect (Zondervan, 2024)
• Tim Keller and John Inazu’s Uncommon Ground: Living Faithfully in a World of Difference (Thomas Nelson, 2020)

Todd Ream: Welcome to Saturdays at Seven, Christian Scholar’s Review’s conversation series with thought leaders about the academic vocation and the relationship that vocation shares with the Church. My name is Todd Ream. I have the privilege of serving as the publisher for Christian Scholar’s Review and as the host for Saturdays at Seven. I also have the privilege of serving on the faculty and the administration at Indiana Wesleyan University.

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Our guest is John Inazu, the Sally D. Danforth Distinguished Professor of Law and Religion at Washington University in St. Louis. Thank you for joining us.

John Inazu: Todd, it’s so great to be with you. Thanks for having me.

Todd Ream: The First Amendment of the United States Constitution reads, “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or the press, or the right for people to assemble peaceably, and to petition the government for redresses of grievances.”

In your estimation, why do these words generate so much debate between people?

John Inazu: Well, it’s interesting I think the words and the concepts themselves all point to the deepest parts of our humanity, the religions we follow, the words that we craft to form our worlds, the groups and associations that we form, the ways that we engage with, with and within a democratic society. These are all core to who we are as human beings living collectively. 

And then of course, the framers didn’t do us a great help by putting together the words as they did, which leave lots of ambiguities, textual ambiguities, grammatical ambiguities, questions of how these words fit together. So you add the weightiness of the substance to the ambiguity of the text itself, and then you throw in a couple hundred years, and you can see why people are having trouble figuring it out.

Todd Ream: Thank you. Is it possible then that the persistent nature of debate over these words, bespeak something positive about the U.S. citizenry?

John Inazu: I absolutely, I think that’s a, maybe a component or an ingredient of what democracy is at its base, an ongoing conversation that’s never quite settled. And that’s why, particularly with the First Amendment, which is anchored in these important civil liberties, I sometimes say civil liberties are for losers. 

And by this, I mean, you only need them when you’ve lost in the political process. If you’re in the political majority, you set the laws or at worst you weigh in with exemptions that favor you and the issues that you care about. It’s when you lose, it’s when you don’t have the majority, that you have to have the ability to push back, to argue for change, and to suggest that something should be different going forward. And that’s why we have civil liberties to protect dissent, to protect non-majoritarian ways of life, to protect minority religious beliefs and practices. 

And when you have that dissent in place and honored by the people in power, then you actually do have that ongoing conversation, which creates a degree of instability, especially for those running the show, but it’s also the best and healthiest way to make democracy work.

Todd Ream: Thank you. At what points in time, if any, were the debates over these words more worthy of the weight of these words? Were there points in time in history that we can look at and see that the debates and the ways we went about debating these concepts and ideas in the First Amendment, were more worthy of the weight that they sought to inform public life?

John Inazu: Yeah, it’s such an interesting question. And I think, maybe the word, the words public life are a pointer in that direction. When there is a public consciousness about what’s our rights and constitutional provisions are, it’s much easier to have a discussion that is embedded in a cultural context and not just abstracted to specialists.

So for example uh in the middle of the 20th century, around the time of the World’s Fair in the late 1930s, what they then called the Four Freedoms they neglected petition, but it was speech, press, assembly, and religion. The Four Freedoms were widely known and celebrated by average Americans and local celebrations and in parades and gatherings and tributes and speeches. President Roosevelt talked about the Four Freedoms regularly. 

And when you have sort of the elevation of these concepts into the public consciousness, it translates to a kind of weightiness or gravitas to all of it. This is important for who we are. This is part of our American identity. You know, compared to today where most Americans can’t even name the right of assembly, for example, as one of our constitutional rights. So when we lose sort of the top level consciousness, it seems pretty evident that the quality of the debate goes down. 

And then I think the other thing is history and remembering how a tradition is built is crucial to understanding how things have come to be. So take the free speech right, for example, which has seen some hard fought battles, particularly in the 1920s, to get us to what I might call a more libertarian approach to free speech, which really matters. But unless you know the history and the cases and the reasons why we got there, you might be sitting here in 2024 thinking, why do we protect hate speech or why can’t we just regulate against speech we don’t like? And so understanding the history and the tradition, knowing not just today’s debates, but also yesterday’s debates seems really important to making this whole thing work.

Todd Ream: In addition to a sense of historical consciousness about these discussions in these debates, what else might prove beneficial to us, in terms of how we go about discussing, debating, and living out these ideas today?

John Inazu: Well, a couple of things. I mean, one thing that comes to mind is politics itself is always about compromise and coalition building. And that’s also true when it comes to our civil liberties. At its core, our civil liberties depend upon them being extended to everybody and protecting the speech and ideas and religions that we like, as well as those that we don’t like.

And so a kind of cross-partisan, cross-ideological willingness to see the important value of these rights for everyone. And fundamentally what that means if I’m arguing for broader religious freedom for religions that I think are false, wrong, or harmful, then I’m actually arguing for more space for those to exist in the world. And that’s a hard thing to wrap your head around until you realize it’s still the best possible option and the alternative can be really bleak. 

And so we argue for the freedom to present other in different viewpoints because we also want that freedom for ourselves. And we trust that if we really do have the truth, the best idea for humanity and for human flourishing, and then we can trust that that’s going to play out over time and the pressure is in some ways off of us.

And that points to another dimension of this, which is that I think, especially as Christians, if we understand that our lives are measured not in election cycles or pieces of legislation, but being part of generations of faithfulness over time, and that we’re bit players in this story, and that maybe the small seeds we’re planting now, we won’t even see the fruit of down the road. And that’s okay. 

We’re just called to be faithful in the moment. We still, we still fight for proximate justice. We still labor and work for these kinds of protections that increase and protect human flourishing. But in some ways we don’t have to see all of this as pivoting on ourselves.

Todd Ream: Thank you. Along these lines, then, are there any particular intellectual, moral, or theological virtues that you believe these words demand and discussions about these words demand, than perhaps others?

John Inazu: Yeah, quite a few come to mind, actually. I mean, I think the first that comes to mind is humility, that we need a kind of epistemic humility about what we know and what we don’t know, and a sort of companion generosity when we encounter strange beliefs and ideas that might threaten us or annoy us or that we find offensive. And just to pause and try to ask ourselves if we’ve really done the work of understanding what the other person is saying or doing or if we can fully step into their shoes or their environment.

And then maybe if we can, maybe we recognize, well, this is really off-putting or maybe even dangerous. And then we need to work through a system and a process to figure out how, if, and when it should be regulated, rather than simply to assume that it needs to be shut down. So a kind of humility. 

But then on the other side, the virtue of courage comes to mind. I think of John Stuart Mill, who said that men’s opinions are much more constrained by social stigma than they are by legal restraints. And I think we can all kind of sense that in our culture today, even though the law might say, you can say whatever you want, in many contexts, people seem afraid or concerned about the consequences of saying something that they think is truthful. Now, of course, speaking truth carefully and with charity and in love is also an important component of how we go about this. But in some cases, at least, there are those of us who could stand to use a little more courage in saying more rather than not speaking up.

Todd Ream: Thank you. 

I want to ask you now about some components of your life story. You earned an undergraduate degree in civil engineering from Duke University and then went on to earn a Juris Doctorate from Duke. Would you please describe the discernment process you followed from being an engineer to then going to law school? 

John Inazu: Yeah discernment process would be way too charitable of a description for that. 

Todd Ream: Well, I want to give you the benefit of the doubt.

John Inazu: The backstory here is that when I was going off to college, we were living in Colorado at the time. And my parents said we will pay for any school in Colorado or you need to figure out how to pay for college. And I, at the time, did not want to go to school in Colorado. So I secured an Air Force ROTC scholarship and that’s what took me to Duke University.

And the upside there was they paid for all of Duke, which was wonderful and really made Duke possible for me. The downside was that they required me to major in engineering and I quickly realized that I did not love engineering and would rather have been doing something else. 

But by that time, I also really loved Duke and loved the school. I was part of InterVarsity at the time, was part of a local church, and had a great set of friends, and had to make this very hard decision of leaving all of that to go somewhere else and major in something I wanted to do or stay there and sort of stick out the engineering degree. And I chose the latter and so I did a four-year civil engineering degree. And then law school was simply an escape hatch from engineering. 

So I petitioned the Air Force to have a delay for my service time. And was fortunate enough to receive that delay. And then the reason for law school was just to do something different. I never talked to a lawyer. No lawyers in the family. I didn’t really know what the law was. I just knew it wasn’t engineering. I knew that there was a little more of a humanities focus, and that was about the extent of my, as you called it, discernment.

Todd Ream: That’s fascinating, thank you. In what ways, if any, did lessons you learned as a civil engineer, perhaps help with the study of law, the manner you sought to read and interpret the law too? In any way, did they coalesce or do they live sort of in separate spheres?

John Inazu: I remember a lot of people telling me entering engineering that engineering would change the way that you think about the world, and I’m not, I’m not sure that happened, at least for me. I felt like engineering was grounded in math and science, and if you were good at it, you got better at it, and you understood a sort of problem solving approach to challenges of the world, but I didn’t see that I came to understand the world fundamentally differently.

Law school was different. I thought after a year of law school, I fundamentally understood the world differently, and it shaped me in quite a different way. And in some ways, those two disciplines have some tension with one another. With engineering, so much of it, especially on the practical applied side, is you do the math and you do the physics and you figure out what works and you can’t just make up the numbers. And you can’t decide you’d rather push in a different direction because the tolerances and the equations are pretty set by other rules around you. 

With law, it’s so much about pushing for the areas of gray and arguing as persuasively and coherently, as possible, why one position is better than another when there might not be necessarily one clear right answer. It’s a very different way of thinking. It’s hard to do. Engineering is also hard to do, but they’re two kinds of different activities. 

I will say, later in life, both of those blended together in and out of different cases I worked on because when people, people in law found out I had an engineering background, they would often give me the complex engineering cases or the patent cases to sort through. And so I don’t know if that was a blessing or a curse, but I returned to my engineering background several times throughout legal practice.

Todd Ream: Thank you. After serving in the Air Force then, you clerked for Roger Ullman with the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis, and then you earned a master’s and a doctoral degree in political science, political theory and public law, in particular, from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.

Would you please describe, and if I may use this term again, discernment process. What led somebody who, not only had one degree from Duke but two degrees from Duke, to then travel the eight miles down U.S. 15 501 to Chapel Hill?

John Inazu: Well, I should first sort of focus on the political science piece of it. I knew toward the end of legal practice that I was interested in law teaching. I had finally, finally figured out that I really loved law and practicing law and that I was probably more wired to be in a teaching role. 

And so I reached out to one mentor with whom I was still in touch and he suggested returning for a PhD and offered the idea of political theory as an area of study. Well, I didn’t know what political theory was. I’d never taken a political science class because I’d done all the engineering as an undergraduate, but I trusted this mentor and applied only to political theory programs and sort of muddled my way through figuring out what that was and what the area of study would look like. 

And one of the schools that emerged as the right place for me was UNC Chapel Hill, largely because it was back in an area where my now wife and I knew a lot of people. We had some friends there, we had a church there, and so that was a big part of the reason to go back. They gave it, they had a great stipend as well that made possible, the education. 

And I remember though, I didn’t apply to Duke and I remember running into Stanley Hauerwas, who became a mentor and a friend a few years later in graduate school, and he said, he looked at me and he said, why are you at Chapel Hill? Why didn’t you come here for your PhD? And I said, I told him, well, I thought three degrees from the same institution would be overkill. And he just looked at me and he said, well, that was pretty stupid thinking, wasn’t it?

Todd Ream: Given your conversation partner, I think you knew you were going to get honest and direct feedback and sounds like you certainly did in that regard. In what ways did serving in the Air Force and then serving as a clerk impact your perceptions of the law and the kinds of questions you went on to want to learn to answer as a student of political science?

John Inazu: You know, one of the great things about practicing law, which I assume is not unlike practicing medicine or another profession, is that once you, once you’re doing the activity that you’ve studied to do, you realize you have a whole other set of questions that arise that can only arise from the doing of the activity.

So for me, clerking for a year where you spend your time reading well written briefs of both sides and then helping advise judicial decision makers about how the case should come out. And then a legal practice component that for me included some significant litigation experience as well as advising pretty significant leaders within the Department of Defense, those were, those were all weighty and responsible activities for me, but they put the meat and bones onto what law is and how to do it and the kinds of real people involved. 

And so when I then returned to graduate school, I was no longer fully dealing in abstractions. I might be reading Augustine or Rousseau but the applications in my mind were always to how these questions played out in American law and culture today. And I think that gave me a very practically-oriented dissertation and a sense of focusing more on how this plays out in the real world. 

It was also quite an interesting contrast to be surrounded by a political theory community where often the very good and very intellectual conversations don’t ever have clear endings. The law, for all of its ambiguity, forces us to decisions that have to be reached. And we might not like those decisions, but they are decisions. 

And at the end of a long case, a judge or other decision maker pronounces an action that creates a new state of the world different from the one that we just had. And it affects real people’s lives in ways that an unfinished conversation doesn’t. So the law adds a kind of, even if temporary, at least a kind of decision point that asks all of us to then think deeply about its immediate implications. And that was quite interesting for me. 

I’ll also say that on the practice piece, I quickly realized that I was being formed in a different way from just education. And it’s led me to a series of questions over the course of my career about what formation during the practice of law looks like, what kinds of liturgies are embedded sometimes subconsciously into legal practice, and what kinds of counter liturgies might be necessary to fend some of those off. 

And so I spent a lot of recent years thinking about that in the context of young Christian lawyers and how they might approach legal practice differently with the sets of questions that they are now asking.

Todd Ream: Thank you After serving as special counsel for the North Carolina-based firm of Ellis & Winters, you began your formal career in academia and now serve as a professor of law and religion at Washington University in St. Louis. 

When looking back on your life, what teachers, if any, had the greatest impact on your sense of vocation?

John Inazu: You know, there’s a long list of teachers who have significantly influenced me. The first person that comes to mind is a law professor at Duke, H. Jefferson Powell. I had him as a young law student and he was really the one person who I stayed in touch with after graduation. He’s the one who told me to go study political theory. And I’ve kind of listened to Jeff for a lot of my life, in terms of major academic decision points. He’s got a, a, a seriousness and a wisdom that I really admire. 

Stanley Hauerwas was so generous to me. I remember I was taking a graduate seminar with him and at the end of the seminar, he just walked up and asked what I was writing my dissertation on. And he looked at me and he said, well, I’d love to join your committee if you’ll have me. And I thought, what a great privilege to have Stan Hauerwas on my dissertation committee. And he then spent a summer with me and one other graduate student reading Wittgenstein, which was a transformative time for me. Just the generosity of teachers like Jeff and Stanley, have been wonderful to see. 

You know, more recently, Tim Keller was a real teacher and model for me. When I got to know Tim and started writing with him and what eventually led to a book that we did together, I think watching him operate at an extremely high intellectual level without any of the academic pretense, and then also encounter a worldwide reputation and influence without taking too much of it seriously, I thought that was just such a wonderful model to have in my life for a while.

Todd Ream: Thank you. You mentioned a couple of the individuals that you read, while a doctoral student, such as Augustine. What authors had the greatest impact on your sense of vocation?

John Inazu: Yeah. First and foremost to me is Alasdair MacIntyre who I learned about through both Jeff and Stanley but MacIntyre, I would say, is the single most intellectual formation on what I do. And if you look closely at almost everything I’ve written, MacIntyre is somewhere under the hood there in some really significant and important ways. I also am deeply influenced by Lesslie Newbigin and Newbigin’s approach to and understanding of the world. 

And then within law, just kind of a different smattering of judges and legal scholars who’ve been influential along the way, including friends. Now, I know you’ll have Michael McConnell soon on this podcast. Michael’s been an important intellectual influence to a whole lot of people across many areas of constitutional law. 

My friend Rick Garnett at Notre Dame has been an important influence to me as well and you know, I think one of you know, you asked this question that started with maybe intellectual influences. And as I was answering it, my mind shifted from that to, to friendships and people with whom I am still privileged to be in conversation with ,who continue to shape me and influence the ways that I see and think about the world. 

Todd Ream: Often one of the things that I think is one of the greatest blessings that academia can afford us is when we can become friends with people who have this kind of influence on us. And then work together to pass that on to the next generation of students. 

You’re the author of three books and the editor of another three books. You’re also the author of numerous articles and publications that serve audiences ranging from scholars to the broader public. In many ways, the publishers for your books also serve a comparable range of audiences. How do you determine which public you’re striving to serve at any one particular time?

John Inazu: I would love it if you could tell me the answer to that question. That solves a lot of the complexity of my life. No, it really cuts to the core of one of my challenges, but also a real opportunity and maybe responsibility that I see in my own life. I don’t know, is often the right answer.

My friend, Warren Kinghorn, who teaches at Duke, a long ago, said something that’s always stuck with me, which is that if you’re writing in different lanes and to different audiences and speaking in different areas, make sure that you are internally consistent in what you’re doing. 

You can certainly code switch. You can certainly set up different audiences knowing who they are, but don’t say things that are fundamentally opposed to one another to different audiences. Because one, that’s just exhausting and not a very authentic way to live. But second, it’s bound to catch up to you, especially with how ubiquitous our writing is all around the internet and everywhere else.

And so I’ve always tried to be very consistent in both the tone and substance of what I’m saying, even if I’m framing it differently for different audiences. And so that then gives me a kind of crossover role in a couple of different ways. There’s the crossover from the academic specialist audience to the broader public, and then there’s the crossover from a Christian-specific audience to an audience of people of all faiths and no faiths. 

And each of those is quite different, I think, and demands a different kind of writing. And I guess one thing I’ve learned at this point is you can’t do all of them well all of the time. So you have to focus and kind of discern where you’re supposed to be. 

So this, this latest book I’ve just published, Learning to Disagree, is an effort to be in the generalist space in both senses of the word. So not an academic book, really aimed for general readers and not a Christian book, aimed for anyone to engage with it. But because of that consistency point, I also hope that it is a value to academics and scholars, that those who care will look at the footnotes and endnotes and engage me with the intellectual substance of the claims that I’m making.

And for Christians, those who care about the roots of the ideas can also point to threads and connective tissues to earlier work that I’ve done. So to me, there’s a, there’s a, there’s an intellectual challenge in that as well, which is fun. But it does take a kind of ongoing discernment about when and how to do it.

Todd Ream: Thank you. You just mentioned your most recent book Learning to Disagree: The Surprising Path to Navigating Differences with Empathy and Respect. If you would, what’s the core argument that you’re striving to make in that book for the audience that you noted?

John Inazu: A couple of things maybe the core argument is the, the surprise here is that lawyers are often seen as the people who stubbornly argue and never quit. But I’m trying to make the case that the best kind of lawyers are actually the opposite. They understand and delve into the best possible version of the other side. They display a kind of charity and empathy and nuance. 

And then importantly, that this set of practices and ideas has some applicability to the rest of us, that these are the kinds of things that we can use at the Thanksgiving dinner table or at the neighborhood picnic or at the workplace conversation and that there are ways in which sort of peeking into a life of law school can have some applications for the rest of us. 

So the way the book comes out then is you can think of it as a combination of things I do in the classroom over a range of very contested and hard sets of issues to help students understand different sides and different nuances. And then combined with that, a bunch of screw ups in my own personal life when I try to apply these to my own relationships and often fall short, all put together in sort of a story form.

Todd Ream: Thank you. Of the other books, or perhaps including this one though, too, that you’ve authored and edited, is any one book more personal to you than the others, in terms of the argument you’re making? 

John Inazu: Yeah, that’s a great question. In some ways there’s a personal dimension in everything that I’ve written. I mean, I do actually sprinkle some autobiographical material even into my very academic books, because it helps, I think, illustrate the stakes of different debates and why they matter. I think working on Uncommon Ground with Tim Keller and other friends was important relationally and it felt like a shared project in a way that a solo authored book can’t be. And so that was personal in a way. 

But I would say, certainly, this newest book has the most personal content where I actually by design and with intention, bring the reader into some pretty raw moments of my own life with my family with my own failures, with maybe some insecurities or, or, or fears along the way. 

And hopefully in a way that’s not overly sharing in the way that we often see unfold online today. But I hope enough to say, this is a set of ideas that will play out in society and in culture, but they’re also about real people and individual relationships. And that’s where this has to start. And they’re about me as a writer and an author also learning along the way, as much as the reader might be as well.

Todd Ream: Thank you. I want to shift back with the time that we have left to talk about, again, and perhaps in more formal terms, your sense of the academic vocation. As a scholar of the law, political science, and religion, how have you come to define the academic vocation, or perhaps maybe more so along the lines of what characteristics or practices are more definitive of it than perhaps others?

John Inazu: Yeah, so I just returned last week from a wonderful conference at Notre Dame with the Virtues and Vocations Initiative, where these sorts of questions were being asked by a number of college presidents and faculty, some of them Christians, some of them from other faiths. And when I had the opportunity to speak to the group, my main message to this group as a whole was I think higher education is doomed as an institution and I think it’s essentially an unrecoverable death spiral. 

Now the good news is there’s still plenty of work to be done, and we don’t really know how long the death spiral will take. It might take many generations, but what I mean by that perhaps bleak sounding pronouncement is that, there’s a lot of inherent dysfunction in lots of higher ed today. And it’s very unclear to me how we get out of that given all of the path dependencies, all of the pernicious influences on higher ed, the ways that money works, the ways that incentives for different stakeholders work, and it’s, it’s a hard problem to see a solution for which then takes me to the question of academic vocation.

And I think the way I see it is that, for the Christian scholar or the Christian academic, the fundamental question is how you flourish and encourage others to flourish within fundamentally broken institutions. Not that you’re going to change or transform the institutions themselves, but to realize for all of their challenges, there are some really good things in these institutions and some real possibilities. The vocational question is understanding your role in the institution and then maximizing flourishing within, not just for yourself, but for others around you. 

And at some places that’s going to take a lot more work than others. We’re all in these very different institutions that are constrained in different ways. And to compare R-1 university to a small school where the teaching loads are much, much higher is in some ways, a very different set of practices and temptations and ideas and possibilities, and so we have to start with where is our local context. 

What are the constraints we face? Who are the people around us? What’s the need and who are the students coming in? And then ask ourselves those questions and then ask how we pursue those while maintaining a very keen awareness of the influences that might divert us or might corrupt us, you know? 

So if you’re at a place like I am where you’re you can quickly get into a bunch of fancy dinners and nice leisurely conversations, there’s nothing inherently wrong with those, but make sure it doesn’t become too easy and too predictable. And if you’re at a place where your teaching requirements are so onerous that you can’t find a brief 10 minutes in your day for reflection of any kind, then look for different kinds of margins and ask how you can do things differently.

And then I think the last thing I would say about academic vocation is be sure to fit it all within your larger vocational callings, whether that’s to family or church communities or your own relationship developing with God, that it wouldn’t become an idol, right? Our idols are always rooted in what are often really good things. And the academic vocation is a really good thing, but it can become an idol unto itself, especially if we start chasing all of the goodies or all of the titles or all of the prestige. 

So I would say hold all of that loosely. And I mean I’m deeply grateful for the position I have and the students that I’m fortunate enough to teach. But I also think so much of the, the academic stuff is just straw. And if we can maintain a healthy distance from it, we can maybe do even more within it.

Todd Ream: What virtues then, might help us to navigate, to recognize, and then navigate that straw, and to live out our vocation as we’ve been called?

John Inazu: You know, I think one of the most important things that comes to mind is, is have the, I don’t even know how, what to call the virtue, but have, I guess it’s tied a little bit to humility, but also it’s a kind of integrity or truthfulness in your life that allows people close to you to speak truthfully about you and to you, especially people who are outside of the academy.

So find people in your life who can step outside of the box that you fit into and say, at the end of the day, you’re a human being who’s placed in this world for a very short period of time and let’s talk about how you’re caring for the people around you, and how you are loving God and loving neighbor, and the rest of it just kind of should fall into place. And if it’s not, if it’s too consuming, if it’s too motivating, if it’s too identity-forming, then figure out ways to mitigate or get out.

I mean, I sometimes think you know, quite honestly these places they’re wonderful. They present amazing opportunities, and it’s also not hard to see how they deform you over time. So I sometimes think, like when, when do I get out of here? And when do I take a break or maybe a longer break to say, this is not, this is not the, the right set of formation in my life right now.

Now I will say, at Washington University, we’ve worked really hard to build a community of, of Christian faculty who are doing this together, and that, to me, has been a lifeline, because I now have 30 friends who are in the same environment, who are wrestling with similar questions from a similar set of influences and desires and hopes and aspirations. And to do that together is incredibly encouraging and I think it’s maybe one of the most important ways to resist the possibility of deformation.

Todd Ream: Thank you. Yeah, what a blessing.

I want to ask you for your definition of a related phrase then and that is public intellectual. What characteristics and or practices should define such a person and what responsibilities do they bear? 

John Inazu: Yeah, I mean, you’ve done some good work in this area so maybe you should answer that question for us. But I think it’s a very… it’s a fraught role, as is the role of lawyer or professor, because these are positions of influence. And I think of the Apostle Paul saying I come not with wise and persuasive words, but with the power of God, right? And we are the idea that we are fools for Christ, that these sorts of things really cut against the, the worldly accolades or positions that might ask other people to listen to us.

But I would say when you find yourself in a role where other people are listening, then to double down on the seriousness of, of that role. It doesn’t mean you can’t have fun. This was something that I learned from Hauerwas as well. I mean, you can laugh a lot, but, be serious and be clear and be accurate. 

And then I think ,also stay in your lane that there’s a temptation in all of these roles, but I think especially the public intellectual role to start to think that you have something to say about everything or that you have even like an intuition about something nuanced about everything and you don’t, right? It’s not it’s not possible in today’s complex and segmented world. So, so stay in your lane and look for opportunities to give other people the time and space to weigh in about especially about things that you don’t know about. 

And so I think something as simply as referring a journalist or someone else to someone who who you know really might know something about this and probably isn’t going to get the call because they might not be as known or as on the radar to a journalist. That can be a small and simple thing to do.

Um, and then I just think, be careful of the, of all the carrots out there for this kind of stuff, you know? And look, I mean, I’m saying this pretty self-aware that I’m in the middle of having just published a book that I want a lot of people to read. And so I’m doing all of the things that I also think are kind of worrisome. And so find, find friends who will keep you grounded and, and tell you when you’re doing too much or too much stuff that’s self-focused. 

And I think discern, you can start to find and discern the people who are kind of doing this thing, who are mostly in it for themselves and the self-promoters. And I think stay away from those people, you know? Unless you’re called to help change them, just stay away and don’t fall for the tricks because there are a lot of tricks and gimmicks out there. There are a lot of people who feed on exactly the insecurities and hopes and desires that we all have to be more known. 

I was just listening to a Tim Keller sermon where he was talking about the desire for affirmation. And he said if you’ve ever been in a room where you’ve been speaking and it’s followed by a standing ovation, two things immediately you know: one, you really liked it and two, it wasn’t enough.

And I thought, well, that’s a great thing to have top of mind and all of this stuff whatever the equivalent of that standing ovation is for you, receive it graciously, but then be very, very aware of what it’s doing to your soul.

Todd Ream: Thank you, thank you. For our last question then, for our conversation, I want to ask you what role if any of the Church should play in cultivating an appreciation for the academic vocation and then for those who are called to do so and to live out such an expression of their calling, public intellectuals?

John Inazu: You know, I first think about the role of pastors, and I have a lot of pastor friends, and I think there’s, I can’t think of few jobs that are harder than being a pastor today, and what the cost it is, the cost of serving others, the cost of discipleship in that role, and so I have tremendous respect for and love for my pastor friends.

I also think it’s the case that with very few exceptions, pastors are not academics and pastors are not public intellectuals, and our culture right now, especially our, our Christian culture, incentivizes and asks and suggests and prods that pastors should be all of those things. And I think it’s very unhealthy and very detrimental to the life of the Church so I hope that pastors will not try to be academics or public intellectuals, unless they fall into a very small category of people who actually fit for those dual roles. 

And at the same time, I hope that academics and public intellectuals will be very generous with their time and their friendship and their expertise to help pastors do the work of the Church. And in some ways, a lot of what I care about is trying to make better bridges between the university world and the Church world, to equip pastors to do this kind of work. 

And pastors will play this—well, we’re seeing this all over the country right now that pastors still have an ability to convey proxy authority to subject matter experts. And if we have the right set of relationships and the right set of experts, that can be very, very important in the Church, in our country, and in our polity. And if we don’t have those relationships and we don’t have those experts, then the proximate authority can go to people who really shouldn’t have it and who can do more damage than good.

So the ecosystem of the scholar, the public intellectual, the journalist, the pastor, and learning from one another and making sure that we’re all understanding our lanes and cooperating toward a common goal and a very serious common goal of helping to educate and nurture and encourage people who, who are in this world, many of whom are trying to be faithful servants of Jesus and who are trying to love God and love neighbor as best they can.

And those of us who are in roles to help them along the way, we need to take that seriously and also realize that it’s seldom going to be individuals alone who can do that, but a group of people in an ecosystem who have to rely on each other.

Todd Ream: Yeah, that’s a lot to think about there, very helpful. Our guest has been John Inazu, the Sally D. Danforth Distinguished Professor of Law and Religion at Washington University in St. Louis. Thank you for taking the time to share your insights and wisdom with us.

John Inazu: Todd, thanks so much. It was great to be with you.

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Todd Ream: Thank you for joining us for Saturdays at Seven, Christian Scholar’s Review’s conversation series with thought leaders about the academic vocation and the relationship that vocation shares with the Church. We invite you to join us again next week for Saturdays at Seven.