It's great.

I mean, people have been living here, the civilization has existed here for thousands of years, longer than almost anywhere else in, in the world, and it's been this great crossroads between civilizations, between continents for, for all this time.

And so there's a lot of history and there's a lot of, there's, you know, it's the birthplace of, of Judaism and Christianity, and Islam has, has taught, seen this as a very central part of the m- uh, Islamic story since the very f- first days of, of the religion.

So all that's really important, and yet the m- m- what we see now is the manifestation of a modern geopolitical conflict that does...

All that histories matters, but that's not what led us here, and that's one of the things you're, that you're often having to kind of address and overcome with, with people when they first engage this, 'cause they're like, there's a lot of this kinda cynicism and fatalism that says, you know, "Well, they've been fighting for, you know, for centuries." Like, this goes back to Ishmael and Isaac, or, you know, like, there's all these stories that make this this centuries long conflict, and it's really not that, right? There's a lot of other history that counters that all along the way.

I start it normally in, in 19th century Europe with the Jewish experience there.

So Jews living in Europe after centuries of anti-Semitism, largely perpetuated out of the church or out of Christian, uh, you know, Christian theology, weaponized Christian faith against Jews for all, for a, for a long time.

That's right.

Like, how did faith interact with that vocation that you had?

Boy, another really great question.

I mean, I came here with a really sincere Christian faith.

I came to work on Capitol Hill in that way, but I...

But a pretty thin theology to know how to make sense of faith and vocation and those things.

Like, what did it mean to be a faithful Christian in the public square, in a, in a, you know, in a, in working on Capitol Hill? Uh, what did that look like? And what I can look back now and see is that Christians have always struggled with knowing how to be in relationship with power, and the, a lot of the history of Christianity is about Christians not getting that right.

You know, so when Christians are either kind of without power, and often without power, you know, kind of can be their histories of persecution and things like that.

Do you have a moment when you were in that, what I call the land of the Bible, it could be Israel and Palestine today, that really shaped your experience, took you off guard, or made you open your eyes to a new perspective in a, in a whole new way?

And why the US Ambassador, Mike Huckabee, who's been very pro-Israel and a, and a Christian Zionist, why even it's gotten him to say this is out of hand.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, to, to understand the contemporary map, let's just take one step back and say when Israel was created in 1948 and '49, Israel declared its independence in 1948 and, and fought a war with its neighbors, and there was an armistice line signed in 1949, and that line is the line where the fighting stopped.

And it did- there was no peace agreement that created an international border.

So it, so these two enclaves in this kind of larger territory between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, these two enclaves were created in, in which the- which were Palestinian.

One was the Gaza Strip, uh, which was the area around Gaza City, and the other was this West Bank of the Jordan River, known as the West Bank.

What do you make of what's happening in the shifting political allegiances around Israel in the US right now?

Todd, if you would, tell us a little bit about yourself and the work that you're doing at TELOS and how you got into it.

Yeah, thanks so much.

I'm really grateful for the opportunity to have this conversation today.

It's been great spending time with you more recently, and I'm looking forward to doing more of that in the future.

I grew up in Arkansas.

I'm in the D.C. area now, so Tennessee is the only thing that kind of separates my home in Virginia from where I grew up in Arkansas.

Tennessee's a long state.

And And so I can imagine just the conversations you've had over the years with people, because when we think about following Jesus and when you frame this as a discipleship conversation, how do you see people making progress when you talk about reconciliation and peacemaking? What are some key things that allow people in that discipleship work to experience reconciliation and peacemaking?