I believe that community life is is simply essential to the health and well-being of people and by that, I mean a relatively small and geographic area in which people through their normal life's work the work they do their shopping their belonging to churches. They're establishing schools the voluntary associations. They establish the friendships that the ubqu would identify yourself with a community of people you take care of each other.In the in many of our major metropolitan areas that becomes almost impossible to do in teaming centers. And as a result, I believe people become literally sick with worry and anxiety and despair and all kinds of bad things happen. No in historically in America. The farming Community has provided those kinds of inter ties and we have in the last generation shipped thousands of those people into the urban areas because of the job needs and that they're not needed this on the farm. I I think it's abundantly showing we don't know how to handle the multitudes of people. We've already got in the cities.That this element of community has been apart of the strength of our about rural constituencies and that that ought to be maintained and sustained what we've got two healthy communities. We oughtn't to lose them to areas where we haven't discovered how to make healthy communities furthermore. I've discovered that the productive capacity of farming does not increase with the size of farms we can produce as well on small farms as we can on large ones mean there's a limit to how small but certain family style Farms. The only thing you gain by keeping on going bigger, is it a moderate additional efficiency?So that the American people could and maybe instead of instead of spending 20% of their income on food can go down to 19% Now I say that isn't worth the kind of agricultural policies that in effect drives people out of those smaller units. The game is not worth the cost. We've got people that want to stay in the Farms those communities want to keep on existing they serve the people and the nation. Well, why in the world should we get rid of them? God for the sake of maybe 1% to cheaper food right now. We have groups of foot in America who are concerned about the family farm at one of those groups has the American agriculture movement. If we don't get good prices for our products, we just won't be able to continue farming and most of these people are family Farmers. I wonder how you feel about that particular movement in their goals and their methods. Do you support the movement certainly as long as it is a non-violent movement? I will support it. I think that they that farmers must make their plight known to the nation. They are no longer pneumatically a large enough group to be able to get the job done just by going to the polls. And so that the way we operate in this Society is it when there is a major area of problem the people rise up and wave their banners and call attention to their circumstances. I think that's what they're doing. And a long as they do isn't riding true American Fashions calling attention and every way they can to the what the circumstances are. Why why I think it's great that they tell their tractor parades in that they assemble in there and ask to meet with proper people in carry-on demonstrations of various sorts. I will have no part in and know that a great many of the people that I know that are supporting this moment will have no part of it when it if if it comes to a matter of a violent confrontations, that's not a part of our best history and it leads to the kind of polarization and anger. I think in the Long Haul those is liable to be counterproductive is productive. Let me ask you just to come in quickly on the power line problem in Minnesota. I do support the people who are protesting against the Powerline extremely difficult one and and support in the sense that I I think that there that we should have in hindsight. Should have been a much better job of researching the questions that are being raised before it becomes as existential is it's become it's it's really too bad to wait until the power line is going up before you answer hard questions about health. And and if those are legitimate questions, and I've not been close enough to know the ins-and-outs of that Vibe certainly I'd want to and field as a people would deserve answers to those health questions before before they're required to have something Come Thru by virtue of eminent domain. I guess I would say I feel for the people in the situation and the other hand I feel for those whose who have invested heavily and have a great needs for for power and and acted in accordance with the laws of the that were That they had available to them and don't see why they should have to be made to suffer because they had they did what was legal. That's just it just was out. We allowed it to get too far before we did the work necessary to resolve it. And that means you're at the kind of an impasse that I know how you're going to get out of. As we said before you are concerned that policies made at a national and state government level have an ethical input. And that in the agricultural area, there are several issues that have ethical concerns connected with them. One of those is the recent policy of the agriculture Department to limit wheat acreage in America by 20% cut it back by 20% How do we square that with the the fact that there are hungry people in the world? Is that a concern for you? Yes, it truly is and church WIll regularly encouraging our people to give liberally to make it possible for for a foods from this country to be exported to places of need. Also people have supported liberally efforts to develop self-help capacities of people in other parts of the world where there is grave food shortages. I would say that they are the major ethical summons that I see in the current situation is for for the United States to continue to seek the ways by which our Autumn green at food-producing capacity can be gotten to the people in other parts of the world who are starving. The political and economic considerations involved there just have to be solved and it's going to require. I'm not suggesting that the American people can solve it all by themselves, but we can at least do a great many things and are doing many things that help in the solving of that problem. If if we can open up the areas of food need in such a way that they can pay what is necessary to get food stuff from the United States. You can go a long way to eliminating the need for cutting back on grain production in this country. As long as we do not have the capacity to get the green from here to there. Why there's no point in just growing more than we need here and driving prices down and making all of the unhappiness that we've got. So on the sword short-range level out. I see the need for the kind of acreage restrictions or whatever program is brought into being to limit the availability of Supply in order to bring prices up but in the long range, I see us having to continually work on the matter of the distribution policies that will mean provision of food for all the people on this Earth. So the problem is one of distribution and not one of Supply at this point. That's right. What are some of the other important ethical issues that we face as a nation? weather in many I think that the certainty that are of the creation is one of them with the land and the water the air at they're not just practical problems. They are that are also ethical problems having to do with what's fair for people and we can't just turn ourselves loose and say that any one group is going to take care of itself and pay no mind to the others. So you've got all those environmental questions have been in and then the energy issues again, you can't get very far into them without without the ethical question being raised. Certainly are there in North Dakota. How do you balance the ethical considerations between the energy needs in the and the the Farmland needs for the future to have a major ethical component in the deciding? I believe that the keeping of government governmental power military power industrial power within Ally refer to it. Is that a human scale? Where the Consciousness is cleared amongst the people that we're not just the victims of big government big business and big military establishments that the people retain control of their Destinies not just as individuals, but as a nation, I don't know just how that happens. But my mind that's an ethical issue having to do with the nature of what human beings. And that anytime we turn into simply items that are being manipulated something bad has happened and when the huge scale of things in this country in the high technology becomes increasingly easy for the individual to feel him or herself is really a nothing of no great consequence in their society that runs just counter to a Christian view of what people have to be thinking and understanding about themselves. So it in the general area is as a whole host of ethical considerations and that ethical decisions are really being made at all levels except that we frequently don't recognize them as ethical decisions at all. in the past few years Christianity in America has seen the emergence of born-again Christianity Evangelistic Christianity charismatic Christianity and a movement maybe toward more conservative and fundamental Christianity having to do with the piety and moralism. I wonder how you see those movements progressing at present. I know that when they first emerged there was some concern on the part of leaders of Life Church organizations that there they might have a device affect an American Christianity. What do you see as their the current situation and what do you see for the future in American Christianity? On the current situation and they did bears on the future that the biggest sign of hope I see is that there there's a great deal of conversation back and forth among the various religious constellations that you referred to and indeed a good deal of cooperation in various directions. So that I would side is printed for instance de that was a loss and Conference at two years ago and which initially was billed as kind of an Evangelical Congress and intended to be built up as being counter to the World Council of churches assembly and yet the discovery was made the day that 60% of the representatives at the laws on conference were also represented at the at the World Council of churches assembly indicating the strong measure of it of interplay. I bet the same token in this country conversations going on regularly between lutherans and Baptists Roman Catholics and episcopalians and lutherans reformed the whole constellation of people within our church has the charismatic Tsar not to Simply going off by themselves as medically as might have happened to generation ago, but are in conversation within the church and trying to understand this what for in a Lutheran circles at least as a new phenomenon and weather and how it is to fit into an ongoing Lutheran congregational life. So the fact that you don't have those automatic divisions and then I'm right and you're wrong at kinds of circumstances arising suggest to me that we're going to find ways of saying yes, there are differences amongst us, but we we can recognize that there is an umbrella Christian faith that encompasses us all and that we will be able to relate to each other work with each other in major areas of our church life where the difference is don't make that I don't have that much effect. Do you say it is a healthy direction that has been taken or the church as a whole? Well, that's always tough to decide. I would say that anything that comes along and stays within the main framework of the face. That then before me that would to have to do with allegiance to the Triune God do the Divine and human nature of Christ and to the doctrine of the church that is all inclusive of of those who belong to him the churches that have got that much of a basic beginning have the capacity for for living with each other were working together and stimulating each other and we need the kind of movements that rise up and say look, you've you've been too lazy. You've been sitting on your backside too much. It's time for the church to get into action and certainly at various of these groups who are not traditionally a part of a Lutheran experience for instance have been requiring that of us in that sense. I think it's been a healthy development. Writer Tom Wolfe has turn the seventies as the me generation and Lutheran theologians. Martin Marty has taken that phrase and expanded it to to take a look at the church and how this said decade has been a decade where people have been very concerned about themselves and their God and less concerned about the outside world than they they wore in the 60s. Is that a concern for you? Do we have too much of this in the church at just a concern for me and my God and not a concern for what's happening in the world. Was that it's always a concern and I think that they're they're reading the times the right when I find point out to all of the kind of self-fulfillment techniques are available for sale. And all the talk about self potential as a suggestion that that there's a way really for us to heal ourselves. If we can just get inside ourselves and straighten things out and it at always runs counter to the to the Christian message, which is that we that we are sinners that we can't heal ourselves that it is God coming to heal us in our allegiance to him that gives us the basis for a.m. For AAA life in society that I can establish healthy relationships with other people. In my terms be a problem for us and what I think our Lutheran Heritage is strong is that day that we live with the paradoxes we live with the fact that you that is that there is an intensely personal life with God for each individual but that that is never to be considered by itself. You are always baptized into a community and an end it end your summoned by God to live out your life in service to the world so that day if you keep both sides of that working and you've got a healthy Church like the minute you go off and become just social activists. Why you soon soon lose the the inner fiber that the that sustains you in a lot of unhappiness. If you just go off into the direction of a me and God kind of religion you just disappear from any meaningful usefulness in the Earth. Where are we airing now, or have we pulled back too much from the social activism from involvement in the world or are we disregarding that mystical connection with the Divine that characterizes the relationship with God? Right. Now I feel good about the American Lutheran Church and would not accuse us of having tilted too far. Either way. I see our big problem being one event. I'm simply losing ourselves and worldliness depends on what you've described his worldliness. But if you're in America, we are so surfeited with all kinds of good things. that we will lose our lives and things we turn around that phrase that we were made to love people and use things and we we love things and use people and it is not something that we sit down and decide we're going to do it's just that we get so engaged in the commercial Pursuits in the buying and selling and the the endless accumulating of the pleasure some things of life that we we just sort of become meaningless to Duet the creation of a just and Humane Society. Thank you very much for coming in and talking with us today. Talk to David Price. Who's the national president of the American Lutheran church. Thank you. This is John. It's t.