Scripture on Policing in America

Dr. Dru Johnson, Celina Durgin

Episode Summary

With the killing of George Floyd and subsequent protests and riots, policing in America has risen to the forefront of our cultural discussion. As we investigate recent acts of police brutality and discussions about systematic racism, certain questions begin to emerge. What is the right response to the vulnerable or oppressed people in our society? How do systems and people become corrupt? What are the proper boundaries of force for individuals and for the state?

In this episode, Dru Johnson and Celina Durgin talk about threads of teaching in Scripture regarding the use of force and systemic racism, as well as practical steps that the Torah and Jesus taught to bring justice into unjust communities. They discuss evaluating police use of force and police–community relations in light of biblical principles, God’s wrath against oppressors, epistemic humility, and how the church can care for the vulnerable.

Chapters

- 1:28 How Torah protections for the vulnerable bear on our notion of justice

- 4:00 How the powerful/vulnerable dynamic plays out in state agency and police use of force

- 7:48 How the Torah evaluates self-defense and de-escalation

- 15:20 God’s wrath against those who mistreat the vulnerable

- 23:04 What the church should do in response to exploitation of the vulnerable

- 36:02 Why epistemic humility is essential for just policing in America

- 38:47 What we can learn from the modern Israeli military

Transcripts are AI generated and are not guaranteed to correctly reflect the content of the podcast.

Transcript

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Dr. Dru Johnson
Founder and Director of the Center for Hebraic Thought
Dru Johnson (PhD, University of St. Andrews) is Templeton Senior Research Fellow and director of the Abrahamic Theistic Origins Project at Wycliffe Hall, University of Oxford. He is also a visiting professor at Hope College, director of the Center for Hebraic Thought, editor of the Routledge Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Biblical Criticism series, host of The Biblical Mind podcast, and cohost of the OnScript podcast. His recent books include Biblical Philosophy, What Hath Darwin to Do with Scripture, and Human Rites: The Power of Rituals, Habits, and Sacraments. Johnson spends his time between Holland, Michigan, and Oxford, England.
Celina Durgin
Former Director of Operations of the Center for Hebraic Thought
Founding Editor of The Biblical Mind
Celina earned a B.A. in Politics, Philosophy, and Economics from The King’s College in 2015 and an M.A. in Philosophy from the University of Notre Dame in 2018. She was previously an editorial fellow at a political magazine in New York, and then, after graduate school, worked in the editorial department of a marketing company in downtown Boston. Some of her written work can be found in Christianity Today.