Chaplaincy Innovation Lab Interview

Hannah: There's a few demographic questions that we have. Again, you do not have the answer that you don't wish to, but this is just to help us with our data analysis. So first of all, how would you identify your gender or sexual orientation?

Logan: CIS gendered male heterosexual.

Hannah: And what is your age?

Logan: 42.

Hannah: Okay. And you are currently located in Oregon. Where in Oregon are you?

Logan: Albany. Right by Corvallis and OSU.

Hannah: And what is your current religious and spiritual affiliation?

Logan: Formally, I'm Episcopalian, but I don't have a formal relationship.

Hannah: Okay. And was that the same growing up or did you have a different religious, spiritual affiliation growing up?

Logan: It was, I realized I was a cradle Episcopalian later in life.

Hannah: Okay, great. And can you describe a little bit of your educational background? So the degrees you've earned and what they've been in?

Logan: Yeah. I started school late after the military. I got a Bachelor of Arts in organizational management from Hawaii Pacific University. Then Master Theological Studies from Duke and a master of letters from St. Andrews. At Duke I also had a certificate in gender theology and ministry. Since the conventional education, I've also got a certificate in business administration from Georgetown, and I feel like maybe something else, but those are the ones I remember right off the top of my head.

Hannah: Wow. Quite the list. That's amazing. Thank you. And then could you describe your current employment status? What do you do for work and just the work that you do with your organization, Pew Pew HQ, your full-time job?

Logan: Yeah, it's self-employed, it's an LLC. Yeah. But it's mostly just writing and I've got, yeah.

Hannah: Great. Okay. Thank you so much. Well, so we'll just get right into it. So in your own words, how would you describe the mission of Pew Pew HQ?

Logan: Promote human dignity for soldiers and veterans, by empowering military families to spiritual maturity, and political engagement through education advocacy.

Hannah: So what are some of the ways in which you do that? What are some of the primary activities of Pew Pew HQ?

Logan: Education, advocacy and writing? I've been doing federal and local advocacy for, it was before the pandemic, probably since 1820, 1816th Congress. Within that, I've managed to get... I got Congress to write a letter to the FBI director asking why they aren't enforcing protections for military families. It got ignored. I also have, through research, I discovered that the rights that we do have are not being enforced and veterans are disproportionately not being believed by the agencies trusted to their protections. And then education, my writing is educational. I've been meaning to do online courses. I just haven't organized them as well as I'd like. And it's also mentoring individuals who resonate with that stuff.

And it's largely what I call high church low lives. Typically people who are too old or in some way don't fit the systems that were supposed to be made for them. So one guy felt called to ordination late and he's an Episcopalian, but if he goes through the process, he'll only have five years before he reaches mandatory retirement age. He's also a veteran. Another guy, really more of a friend I just known for a while. I helped him with some legal stuff in family court. But since then, yeah, I don't know. I don't know what to say other than mentoring. Yeah. Then I have four main, well, three pillars that I'm just now starting to solidify. The first is pewpewhq.com.

The other is gijustice.com, for which is helping people recognize human dignity for soldiers and vets, gijustice.com. Pew Pew HQ is for Christian soldiers who are looking to find meaning and faith and service. And then my personal website, loganmi.com, is for civilian allies who are learning to love their military neighbor. I'm also a professed member of the Hospitallers of St. Martin. And I do their website, our website. And that undermines, not undermines, it's the undercurrent of a lot of things. Martin of Tours is our patron saint. He is also my patron saint, and his witness informs a lot of what I've been doing. Yeah.

Hannah: Awesome. Now with this advocacy work, are you the primary one that's doing a lot of that political advocacy work? Or are you helping to mobilize? Okay. Very interesting.

Logan: I'm not good at mobilizing. Yeah.

Hannah: Okay. Thank you for that. And is this affiliated... Oh, go ahead. Sorry.

Logan: There are community organizers such as the Industrial Areas Foundation associated with Saul Alinsky. By using a democratic model, they are unable to voice the concerns of a minority that has already been told they need to shut up and drive on. So when I was in Durham, North Carolina, I went to several meetings and nobody in the community gave a enough about the lack of civil rights for service members to be able to rise to the level to induce a commitment from IAF organizers. Military families make up less than 9% of the population. So democratic models don't work because we aren't the majority. That's not how our government was set up. So community organizing in the conventional sense cannot and/or will not, does not represent our interest because we will never reach a minority until we institute a draft again.

Hannah: Wow, very interesting. Thank you for telling me that. And so are you affiliated, has this come out of any congregation or is this led predominant by yourself?

Logan: Myself.

Hannah: Awesome.

Logan: Well, the Hospitallers on paper, but we're a diverse group and I'm absolutely the most active.

Hannah: Sure.

Logan: But yeah, I think whether the community likes it or not, the Hospitallers is a site that I think fits most closely with all the different pieces.

Hannah: Okay. Thank you. Who would you say the primary beneficiary is, I know know these Christian soldiers, but who else would you say is the primary beneficiary from the work that you do?

Logan: I mean, primary are Christian soldiers. They're also my primary audience, but almost everyone I talk to knows somebody who is in the military and makes some attempt at, they'll ask me for advice. Or in the case when I was at Duke, a handful of professors leaned on me for advice. Howard Watts asked me to sit in on his last ethics lectures, specifically his one on war, and he asked for feedback and I gave it to him. However, when time came to reciprocate or to recognize the value that I've been giving them, they don't. So the beneficiaries are more numerous than you might think because the value is kept under cloak and dagger and it's kind of fucked up, but it is what it is.

Hannah: Yeah. And the work that you do, is it just central to Oregon or is there larger groups of people that you seek to help? Or are there pockets of people that you're helping or assisting?

Logan: Certainly centralizes around military bases. When you spend more time in the military, you typically retire and remain near military bases. So San Diego, Fayetteville, North Carolina, and what's the Jacksonville? North Carolina, Seattle, I'm sure. But military bases are just high concentrations of folks who typically benefit from this, DC, Virginia. Virginia is actually the one state... The states with the highest percentage of military veterans are typically northern rural states, Maine. I think Washington had a number of them because the Seattle Fort Lewis. Virginia is the only, it's the furthest south and it's also the most populous state to also have a more numerous military population than average because DC federal jobs are military preference. So yeah, it typically follows there, but I don't maintain any high engagement with individuals.

But I think it's a lot of this, for example, when I post my last book, the publishers, it was a horrible experience and they absolutely sucked at their job, but they have a really wide distribution network. And girls, now it's time to be quiet if you're coming inside, get your mouth off the screen. The book doesn't appear in small independent bookshops. It appears in Barnes & Noble. And it sold closest, I think, to military bases because Barnes & Noble had just reorganized to give more agency to individual store managers. So the Oceanside Barnes & Noble at any time had three copies of the book I would visit when I was living in California. But you couldn't find it at independent book retailers because the marketing was so bad. No, you had some already in your lunches. So, yeah, I feel like it's a suppressed audience because the military community has been taught to shut up and drive on. Civilian bias is the driving force in America today.

So I find myself, like I'm talking with someone about getting a workshop at Corban University, which is this little Christian college nearby. And the person who would give me access to that audience is a civilian. So I have to dress up my language so that they don't think I'm some angry veteran or some, well, they're conservatives, they don't care if I'm a nationalist, but I have to support myself to civilian bias because civilians are typically in power in places that would otherwise grant me access to my own community. Military bases, many of them, you have to have an ID and be registered to get on base. If they catch wind that I was a CO in 2005, they could tell me I can't come on base. So it's a real weird... yeah, it's a fractured base. And I get a lot of people who have maneuvered, like the guy who's working on being a deacon in the Episcopal church. Yeah. He knows that's most the military follows American population, it's polarization.

So in the military, you may be a nationalist, a religious nationalist, and you may not like my message because I am saying I'm encouraging a thing for yourself, or that Jesus did not engage in violence. On the other hand, pacifists because my sense is I wasn't penitent enough or I didn't express enough penitence that if clearly I must have my theology wrong if I don't think that the military itself is inherently evil. So it's a very polarized environment that adds on. If you're just drinking the Kool-Aid in America, being in the military gets ratcheted up because of the meaning and symbolism that we put in the military for better or for worse. So that's the challenge of organizing.

Hannah: Wow. Thank you for sharing that. And we'll talk a little bit later on too about some of the challenges that you continue to face, but it's very interesting. It's such a unique organization. These are the kinds of things that you're working through that may not be exposed to others. So I appreciate you sharing that. I want to talk a little bit about how Pew Pew HQ got started. So if you could just give me a little bit of background on that, that would be awesome.

Logan: Yeah. I used to call it Centurion's Guild, which is a little bit, it was not as simple as it could have been. But also Centurion's Guild was wrapped up in the simple way and Shane Claiborne and Red Letter Christians and Shane and Tony to much lesser degree. I primarily, I'm much more familiar with Shane. Yeah. Our relationship degraded over time. The more I realized that he didn't have my interests at heart. Long story short. Well, yeah, yeah. I was doing a lot of stuff with Red Letter Christians as he was building that up. My sense is, and it's just speculation, but when I was interacting the most with Shane back in '08, '09 into 2010, he was eyeballing either taking over for Jim Wallace at Sojourners or EAPE with Tony. And instead of those two options, he linked up with Tony and made Red Letter Christians. And a lot of civilian bias, and civilian theology was becoming much, it was something I was gaining language for. And so at some point I learned he had been leading these leadership retreats or leadership gatherings or something for Red Letter Christians.

And he had been building something over the course of a year. Well, I'd known him since 2006. I went to Iraq with him in 2010. I was at his wedding, never brought up, never invited me into leadership circles. And I was none the wiser, but I realized, "Oh, there's a line that you see that he saw between me and him." I didn't meet some expectation. Naomi, close that gate, please. And so that was a catalyst for me. Okay. So we're not whatever I thought we were. And Centurion's Guild was sponsored and lived for a long time, legally underneath the simple way. And finally in 2016, things really broke down, just in general. And I just decided Centurion's Guild is like a skit, an earlier iteration of something that I need to develop further. So Pew Per HQ was just this idea that I thought of replacing Centurion's Guild with. And the one, the church pew, it's inside the church. It bears the weight of all the congregants, and it doesn't give a shit which side of the aisle you sit on. It's just there for you to rest upon.

The other one... Careful. I don't want anybody falling over that ledge. Naomi, get that off your face, please. And for some time, there's a cottage industry that we call in the military. We call it the vet bro industry or vet bro, we're going to run style Black Rifle Coffee Company. We're like guns and a certain subtle, but very clear conservatism. I could see myself having a fun conversation with whatever his name is, Evan Best from Black Rifle Coffee Company. I'd probably like their coffee, but I'm not going to invest any more energy than that in them because I don't give a shit about guns, I guess. But one of the things that it represented was, in the artillery, we would call instrument pew pew, your little PP shooters or PP shooters, pew pew professionals. And so I stumbled upon this imagery of the pew and then the little green soldier toy.

And that was an HQ. It sounds the same. It's short. It's for URL. And it's funny. And I realized that one of the things I realized when I was trying to make space for myself and other people's organizations or communities, I wasn't really being myself. I was importing myself. Because I've always been goofy, a little lighthearted. My partner now, Laura... No, no, don't put that on your head. No. We took the name Isaac when we were married before things went south because our friends that knew us would see how we liked to laugh together and we're really goofy. And so we took the name Isaac at our community's encouragement because that was a character trait they noticed. But I wasn't the same person. I was more serious. And I realized I felt like I had a lot more room because I was making myself small.

And military service... Naomi, leave her alone, move away from her right now, find something else to do. Dark humor is really, it's a coping mechanism, but it's highly advanced. We can joke about some really messed up stuff, and I didn't want to turn that part off in me. So Pew Pew HQ was this... Naomi, get away from her now. Now, drop it. I told you to find something else to do. If I have to tell you again, you can go play in your room. Okay. Keep that up. Thank you. So, yeah, Pew Pew HQ was me trying to evolve essentially, but I think it's closer to my own heart than what... I think in my first book, reborn the 4th of July, that's not my story. I was writing as someone for someone who wasn't myself. The first... Naomi, stop. Rosemary, stop. On the first page of the book, there were several left bombs that were uttered in the, I described as ambush. And it was very clear, and I didn't fight it, but I couldn't put an F bomb in an IVP book.

And that set the stage for everything else. Like, okay, I need to present myself and conduct myself in a way that's appealing to people who aren't in my community. And so Pew Pew HQ is for and by Veterans Grunts, lower enlisted Christian soldiers and veterans. And the more I lean into my own experience and training, the more I discovered things like I put on the blog why it's important that Jesus's name is Joshua, or Mary was a military spouse if God was a warrior, and that makes Jesus a military brat. And then I realized like Galil ha-Goyim, which is what Isaiah nine calls the Galilee, that's where the Romans got the name for Galilee. Galil is district and ha-Goyim in Isaiah nine is non Jews.

And the land of Zebulon and Naftali were the troop tribes of Israel is just like Vietnam. Israel realized that it's hot air that it had been spewing about its own might, was exposed both to the world and themselves. And so instead of absorbing that, not guilt responsibility, moral responsibility onto themselves, they're the lost tribes. They're non Israel. And I thought it was fascinating that that's where Jesus spends most of his life in a disgraced military towns of Israel. And yeah, it just kept building from there. But yeah, if God is a grunt, if Jesus is God, God is a grunt. And that changes a lot of things that have been dogmatic for Christians over the last 2,000 years.

Hannah: Absolutely. Absolutely. And so this need that you were seeking to meet, this was this need for yourself to feel like who you are, and also for other people or other veterans to feel more fully themselves. Would that be correct? Are there any other needs that you were trying to meet?

Logan: Oh yeah, military suicide was what started it. I don't think that pharmacological and therapeutic interventions have run their course and suicide's still going up. Human dignity is what's behind the suicide epidemic. It's because just like me, Christian soldiers or soldiers come home and they're told, this is who you Footlocker, not Footlocker, Hurt Locker that's who you are. Shut up. Don't get in the way of us telling our story about you to further our own preconceived notions about what it means to be a nation that needs a military force that we've lost touch with. Don't get me started on Mark Bull and Kathryn Bigelow. I think they're pieces of shit, but whatever.

Hannah: Excuse my ignorance, but who are they? I am so sorry.

Logan: Mark Boal wrote a Playboy interview on EOD tech by the name of Jeffrey Sarver, and that was developed into the Hurt Locker. Jeffrey Sarver sued them for defamation, and he lost. He had to pay Hollywood producers. And in arguing the case, a lawyer, an entertainment lawyer in California said that soldiers aren't entitled to privacy. What if we said women aren't entitled to privacy? Well, we are. Dobbs has ended the idea of privacy for women. What if we said African-Americans aren't entitled to privacy? Mark Bull claimed that the Blaster one idiot caricature was a composite character. There's only 150 EOD texts at any given time, he claimed to have spoken to over a hundred of them.

And I'll bet my money none of them are talking to him now, but let's give him the best picture so that we as civilians feel better about the caricatures that are driving our imagination around soldiers in bed. No, I know she hasn't been in all day. I want to let her have some time outside. You can go out there though, if you're careful not to let her out. You can't control sister. Yeah, I'll be right here if you want.

Hannah: I love that. Wow. Very, very interesting. Okay. No, thank you so much for providing that information. So you mentioned these names Shane and others, but are there any other people that you think were key people or key groups and helping you to watch people partnered with?

Logan: That I partnered with?

Hannah: Yeah.

Logan: No.

Hannah: Okay.

Logan: I think it's basically my own thing.

Hannah: Okay.

Logan: Yeah.

Hannah: Awesome. Were there any models or any other groups were doing similar work?

Logan: I mean, I like the Bible for normal people, the ends group. Girls, you can be quieter or you can go back outside. Rosemary, you can be quiet or you can go outside. Yeah. Well, yeah, the layout and the attempted community with the Bible for normal people, and they call it the Society for Normal People and the Bible project here in Oregon as well, I just love how simple it is. And they trace themes, they do books, but they also, yeah, those are the ones that I have looked at. Outside, outside, outside. I've already told you once, make all the noise you want outside. I'm trying to talk on the phone, I cannot hear myself. Are you going outside or are you going to be quiet? No, she was not quiet. You can go out though. Remember you wanted her to go outside with Bonnie like two seconds ago. Do you need help or you have it? Okay.

Hannah: Okay. No worries. I have a sister, I totally get it. We spent a week together and we're still the same way. I was 20, so do not worry. Yeah. So signing people.

Logan: Yeah, those are the two that their presentation was really appealing. I really want to be better about online courses, but I'm still, I think I'm developing stuff more. And yeah, I feel like there's one or two more, but I mean the American Bible Society has a very robust... What do they call it? The ministry, Armed Forces Ministry something. They own, I want to say the AAS. No, they don't own it, but their interest is proselytizing American Bible Society. I can't remember the agency, but they have one app that is legit, recon, American Bible Society put out operational recon. This app that walks you through the book of Mark for soldiers and veterans. The actors are supposedly soldiers and veterans.

I don't know who's coming up with a theology for it. I haven't listened... I haven't gone through all of that. But that's really, I think they're onto something. But like I said, I mentioned proselytizing. I just want soldiers and veterans to be able to have tools to see the fact that the Bible and the church as the Bible imagines it is a home for them in churches, little seed churches that tell them in very subtle ways that you're not a part of us. Like Richard Hayes in his moral vision for the New Testament, which I guess he's recanting because now he's not anti-gay anymore.

But he made points, or he made this argument against homosexuality and moral vision for New Testament. And he is recently doing something with his son, kind of walking that back in the same book he called Soldiers. It sticks with me because it was like during my seminary education, he said, soldiers can only be anomalous to the faith to highlight the difference between insiders and outsiders. Look at these outsiders who are doing better than you, but that misses the mark so fundamentally that it's ridiculous. And I didn't have his eyes to see it before, but he never did any work on Roman military history. The first guy that started to was Christopher Zeichman, right? As I finished seminary in 2015, soldiers have always been a part of the Old Testament, New Testament.

And it's not just Cornelius easy one in Acts 10, it's like Lydia, the Purple Cellar in Philippi. Philippi is a military colony. The jailer at Philippi would've been a military, a legionary, not just an auxiliary troop. There are all these military connected individuals that we pass over, gloss over, just like, oh, it's incidental. He has this commentary on Philippians. And I took a class with him at St. Andrews that got me thinking, not just there's this false distinction between early church and then theology. And he tries to break that down. He says, look, theology is going on with Paul before the gospels are taking place. And that clicked in my head something that there's a historical debate about Christian attitudes toward military service, and it's always been by Patristics because early church is this patristic word, apparently.

But Cornelius either was a soldier in the Augustan cohort or he was a part of that unit prior and had gotten out. But he is almost certainly active duty, not only because it's not in Caesarea, is it? No, it is. Yeah. Caesarea where the Roman soldiers would've been, he had one of his soldiers, Stratiotes, go to see Peter. You only have a soldier if you're a soldier yourself. If you're a vet, you maybe are training soldiers, but he may very well have been a soldier. When Peter goes to see him, is it Caesarea Cornelius? I can't remember where it was. But Caesarea is where all the legionaries would've been before the Great War in '66. Anyway, you asked me about models. Yeah, that was a long rambling answer.

Hannah: No, it's great.

Logan: No, not very much. Maybe one thing that I could say as to why my mind goes in that direction is I realized that the church, as we typically think of it, the building up the street, maybe some of the recently past members, like that didn't save the Bible and the body of Christ as imagined in the Bible saved me. I saw other soldiers and I wanted to know more about them because I wanted to know how I fit into the church. And I would hear people like Hayes saying, "Oh, you're an outsider." Or I'd see the pacifist ideology around military service is bad, full stop, that just never sat comfortably with me. And so I tried to find answers that the living church wasn't providing. I fell into exegesis and the rest because ecclesiology was, people talk a big game, and ultimately it's just about their own little wants.

Hannah: Yeah. Wow. And I think that's a huge part of this project is understanding that that idea is very true. People are outside and feel outside of the church, and we want to see who are the people that are creating the inclusive environment. So thank you for the work that you're doing. It sounds incredible. So you discussed that as an LLC. You know, describe some of the ways in which you're able to find funding or continue to find funding for the project. No funding at all? Wow.

Logan: Well, I'm a 100% disabled, so I have the flexibility to do this stuff as a pet project. But yeah, I mean, we haven't talked about future stuff, but I am now embracing this idea I've had for a long time, and it looks like I could do it if I just pace myself, but to create a tiny home farming community, not only for vets, but based off of the witness of Martin, Pius, Ignatius, Francis, all these military veterans that took their service and allowed it to shape their faith and their expression. It dawned on me that we're in this new moment in time, at least in the western world. I can't speak to the east at all, but we're at a time now where I as a veteran and then the minority. But just two generations ago, everybody was expected to serve. And maybe you didn't because of some reason. That's fine, but I have to make some kind of rationalist to why I joined.

But two generations ago, civilians had to make rationalization for why they didn't join. And so people like Ignatius and Francis, they never had to say, I learned this from the military and this is what I'm going to do. But if you look, they did, Ignatius is the first monastic to add obedience to his vows. They call them the [foreign language 00:37:59] to Jesus. And we come up with the companions of Jesus, or what do they call it now? The Jesuits, the company of Jesus. It's a military unit. And in the Spanish Bible, [foreign language 00:38:16] is a military unit, just like an infantry company. And so they call him, the company of Jesus is naming it within that martial space.

And you don't have to say it out loud because everybody had some moral social connection to the military. If the Huns come breaking down your door, well, you or your Lord is going to give you a gun and he's going to expect you to join all your other vassals and keep the Visigoths away or whatever, all else. But now we live in, I still remember Obama's inaugural speech about personal responsibility. We've got all this freedom, but so many of us haven't done anything, haven't anything to get it. So the pacifist claim of the military is all that is so historically ignorant, the very superficial nationalist grenade that gets thrown of like, well, you can go live in a communist country if you don't like it. It's like, that's true. We have this because of people who sacrifice and now you're poopooing them who sacrifice. Great example. Ralph Abernathy was Martin Luther King's second in command.

And everybody, I won't say everybody, there's a movement now to soften this, but Martin inherited a movement from Black vets who had already been winning legal victories from Morgan v. Virginia, Keys v. Carolina Coach, like Freedom Riders wouldn't have happened if had it not been for a Black PFC in uniform who was kicked off a bus in North Carolina and her father, her Catholic World War Two veteran father saying, no, you should fight this. Keys v. Carolina Coach is the closest any juridical body has ever come to reversing Plessy v. Ferguson. But it wasn't SCOTUS, it was international Commerce Commission.

And then Martin has the audacity in 1967 to come out against Vietnam with his friend Ralph, standing right next to him and say, without qualification that the... Girls, what's going on? Hey, you girls both need to be more gentle with each other, please. I'll look at that in a second. Ralph is sitting next to him in the Riverside Church in New York City when he says that the business of war cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love, because we're sending people home from dark and bloody battlefields, physically handicapped and psychologically deranged. And that may have been true of many people, but I literally was made to poster boy for PTSD by Christianity today before I finished my degree at St. Andrews.

So I know what it's like to have civilians tell me that I PTSD and I'm broken, I'm more torn. And it's like, what moral hell scape are you imagining when you look at me? And why won't you let me re-narrate for you what I actually experienced? And So Martin and Ralph was disowned by the movement when that Martin slept with one, maybe two women the night before he was assassinated. We want saints that are pure and pristine. We throw all these MLK Boulevard and we don't want to remember he was an adulterer, he was a great motivator, a great and courageous person, he was also an adulterer. And it was also Ralph Abernathy that paved the way for him. He was already Montgomery when Martin came.

Ralph named before his SCLC, there's the MIA missing an Action Montgomery Improvement Association drew on the military imagery just days before our nation's second Veterans Day. You think there's just a coincidence? Because I think that Ralph knew that, and Maxwell Air Force Base is right there in Montgomery. There's a military community that was there to support Rosa Parts and Martin and Ralph. We've put on these blinders because we don't know how to talk to soldiers and vets, so we don't talk about soldiers and vets and the history that they represent. Anyway, no, no funding. It's just me plugging away.

Hannah: Wow.

Logan: Nope, not right now. I'm still on the phone call. Maybe later though. I promise you can sit on my lap later. Give me 10 more minutes. 13 more minutes.

Hannah: Love that.

Logan: Because I just told you.

Hannah: No, you're totally fine. So you had talked about this perception of veterans and this negative perception. What are some other barriers that you encountered in getting Pew Pew HQ off the ground?

Logan: I haven't asked for anything from other people, so it was, no, I just paid for the website and all the IP is mine.

Hannah: Wow.

Logan: I've learned that if I... Yeah, it's kind of messed up, but yeah, I learned I can't count on civilians, particularly influential civilians, because they'll take it away. So if I don't ask for anything, nothing can be taken back.

Hannah: Can you tell me about maybe a situation in which you try to depend... I know this could take up the next 13 minutes, but especially in what you're trying to do. Where that trust was broken.

Logan: I mean, there's a lot, but the easiest one is, yeah, Red Letter Christian... Naomi, get your foot out of the hutch. I'm going to watch this in a couple of weeks and laugh at it.

Hannah: It's going to be amazing. It's going to be awesome.

Logan: Yeah. So I blogged a lot more when I was in my cage, for lack of a better word, because people wanted veteran credibility and they didn't really vet my stuff so much. They didn't edit it too heavily until eventually they did. But that's another story. And I was starting to call Shane out on some of this stuff, and they were having to revive the Red Letter revival in Virginia. That's the home of Desmond Doss. And I pointed out Desmond was a medic who insisted on going to the military and he refused to carry weapons. There's a movie about him, Hacksaw Ridge, Mel Gibson's, kind of a. But the movie wasn't too bad, but that would be a great place and time to talk about the complicated and nuanced nature of military service and faith. And I was pressuring them.

I wasn't like... Yeah, I was very clear. Anyway, they invited me out finally, I couldn't be there because I think we were expecting still or before our first was born. And so I couldn't go, but I recorded a video and I was like, I assumed they do something with it. I don't know if they did, but I found out later that there was some anti-military bias thing that was said. And there's the folks at the Institute on Religion and Freedom are Democracy IRD, Mark Tully and Mark Leviche. They always have people go covertly to some of these things and poo-poo the progressives. Anyway, they had someone there and they called out some really stupid thing that somebody said, and Tony Campolo had to apologize in writing for being insensitive to military community. And it wasn't the last straw, but I was like, yeah, I'm not crazy.

You guys have some tip on your shoulder for the military. And so I got into this back and forth with Shane's administrative for RLC, and I had enough, I was like, okay. I was accused of being insensitive or angry to red letter Christians people. And I asked for some kind of like, what are you talking about? And I never did. It just was like, you were very hard to work with and you're really frustrated and upset, blah, blah, blah. I was like, "Who?" Because I've been saying you've been doing that for a year now, and I'm still waiting for my apologies. Let's just do one thing at a time. So I said, you know what? I'm done. I said to the only administrator that I knew, I was like, "Hey, by the way, if I've ever done anything to upset you, I hope you let me know nothing." But by the way, would you please pull all my stuff from RLC I can't associate with you because that's going to undermine my work. And they said, "Oh, we've already pulled it down."

I was like, "Oh, well, at least we're thinking alike." And so I put all that stuff up somewhere. But yeah, I mean, I don't have the same credibility because published on blah, blah, blah with a link, but if it doesn't appear, someone might not believe me. But that's the economy we live in. That's something I've accepted, it's the cost of doing business with people that don't trust me and don't do so for reasons other than their own bias. But yeah, I pitched something in Christian century that is now part of a book proposal being considered by Eerdmans, but I worked with Amy Frykholm to develop this meditation on Luke. In Luke one of the things that Jesus says last is forgive them know not what they do. And we often might assume that they, third person plural, being the soldiers who executed Jesus. But if you think that's true, then you don't get Jesus's salvation.

Because Jesus has forgive them, and it's either the soldiers or everybody. And if it's everybody, then it means you need to reckon with the fact that you might have done some stupid shit that you haven't wrestled with yet. And you can, it's a very superficial interpretation, but you can say, yeah, Jesus was talking about the executioners, but the implications of that are pretty stark. The alternative is no, Jesus says, Father, forgive all of those idiots for what they all did and keep doing, which then forces us to recognize that soldiers are no different than us. That if I can yell, kill, kill, kill on the bayonet range, it's the same thing as I could be doing that in the same way that everybody could have been yelling crucify, crucify and crucify. We're not any different other than the fact that in the last few generations in our country, we've made this false distinction between military and civilian, and we're now living in the results of that.

And so it feels like circular, like Hurt Locker exists because we don't know how to talk to soldiers and veterans. And then that's the only way that we could see them. And so I know a lot of vets who will take the civilian savior handouts because I have a hundred percent disability. I have some flexibility, but not everybody does. And you need to hang your head to get a handout. You need to get that sometimes You don't want to go hungry, you don't want to get kicked out of your home, yeah, please, master, give me a hand-over, yeah.

Hannah: Wow.

Logan: It's the economy that we live in. But that's why Monasticism gives me hope. What might it look like to create a coherent, somewhat self-sustaining economy of dignity that draws from these lessons, but isn't exclusive to the military, but we'll see.

Hannah: Yeah, a 100%. In that vein, are there any other goals or projects that you're working through for Pew Pew HQ or any of these other initiatives you're doing?

Logan: No, I'm actually just solidifying those pillars. And if you go to my substack, that's where I'm seeing the choke point. So I see substack is where I try out ideas with people who are allowing me into their email inbox, and then I categorize posts into one of the three website blogs. And part of my strategy is like, look, it's search engine optimized. I'm starting to incorporate those practices into what I'm doing on the website, so hopefully makes it easier to see and over time build some credibility. Because again, if I have to make something myself, I'm going to be really... Yeah, I have to have high walls because once you see civilian bias, you can't unsee it. And I see it everywhere. So I'd be really selective about who I invite to write for me. But yeah, no, writing is the main thing. And luckily it doesn't cost money. Well, it does, but it's a low hanging fruit.

Hannah: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Just one more question for you. When it comes to mind, the work that you've done over the last couple of years there, any major successes that come to mind or anything that you're just super proud of?

Logan: Yeah, my kids. A lot of this stuff I developed as a stay-at-home dad because I got forced out of academia, and our youngest is now heading to public school next year. So it's now time for me to start reentering whatever wasteland will have me. But no, I was able to develop these ideas while trying to be a decent dad that, yeah, that's what I'm most proud of.

Hannah: Sure, sure. Looking over what we talked about the last hour, is there anything that you think is important for me to know about the work that you're doing or where Pew Pew Pew HQ is headed?

Logan: Chaplaincy began with Martin. Military... Yeah. The first chaplains were the guardians of his Kate in tour before it was lost during a battle where it was being tokenized for the same human thing. Chaplaincy is bridging two disparate populations. For Martin, it was the church in the state. He saw the church, two bishops in Spain attempting to leverage the gauntlet of power or whatever, using capital execution to enforce theology. And Martin publicly excommunicated these two bishops. He had a very friendly relationship with the Emperor at the time, and he had the Emperor's balls and the vice because he catechized his wife and he told the Emperor, you need to cut it with this shit. These Spanish bishops, they're not understanding the important distinction between what the church does and how it operates with the machinations of the state.

And so Maximian, he tamped down the Spaniards for a little while until he was leveraged another way. And ultimately Prashilyam was murdered in 387, I think. And Martin for a long time thought he had failed and that, yeah, he almost lost hope. Martin's also the first bishop to maintain a monastic lifestyle. He refused to live in the Cathedral opting instead to live across the river Loire in a bunch of caves with 50 disciples. And even to this day, the Basilica is not the Cathedral and tour. The Cathedral is like this big beautiful thing, and Martin wouldn't have any of it, but you can't have chaplaincy without the witness of a soldier Saint who a lot of pacifists, including his own biographer, believed that he had done something wrong and serving in the military girls outside. So it astounds me that were still wrestling with the same basic problem. So Pescius, his biographer, like most of the church, was embarrassed that he spent time in the military.

And the way he writes Martin's biography, it suggests he was in a couple of years, he had this crystallization conscience, and then the next day ran off to get baptized and was forced out of the military. But his numbers don't add up. Julian under whom Martin was serving, didn't reach the battle of Worms, now known as Strasburg until 356. In other words, Martin spent an entire 25-year career in the military before he saw the battlefield for the first time, said, I'm a soldier of Christ, it's not permissible for me to fight. Gets kicked out. And then the last 30 or 40 years of his life is when he does most of the things that he's known for. And he was ridiculed by the other bishops because he didn't appear Bishopsly, the big city of Tours enticed him out of this tiny little town in the countryside because he preferred to be with the rural poor.

And I was in that in France at the community of St. Martin, the night that Donald Trump was elected in 2016, I was on pilgrimage and I didn't expect Trump to win, but here I was trying to make sense of the fact of what just happened. And it dawned on me that not only is it about soldiers, it's about the poor. Donald Trump appeals to the poor. He can sit on a golden toilet surrounded by other people all dressed up, and he still seems to capture the attention and the loyalty of poor, less educated rural white voters. This isn't really an issue of military civilians, it's an issue of class. What do we do with the people that we don't want to be a part of our community, whether that's the poor, whether that's who people who do violence, chaplaincy was born as a bridge to connect disparate populations, and I was aware of the Chaplaincy Innovation Center. My wife is a hospital chaplain, and of course I know a shit ton of chaplains, but as any soldier will tell you, some chaplains suck, and some chaplains usually prior enlisted are a relative request.

And I've been, for lack of a better word, praying that the work y'all are doing fulfills the work of the earliest chaplains, the chaplaincy as a method of practical theology. Yeah. What I'm doing is foundational to the church's identity. Same with Martin. I think your work is really important, and if there's any way to support it, I will. But like every success, I think in church history, it's come at some cost. And maybe that cost has already been paid, I don't know. But I hope you carry back with you to other people with this grant. The impossibility of looking away from military families, only 9%, that's the most inclusive number you can get to soldiers and veterans is 6%. We had another 3% when we had family members. But there is no more important work than this, whether it's chaplaincy or reconciling our population to itself. I'm fascinated by the sociopolitical location that your organization finds itself in and it's intersection with what I do and my patron saint and the founder of chaplaincy. But I guess that's what I would leave you with.

Hannah: That's amazing. Thank you so much for that. I really appreciate it, and I just appreciate all your time and dedication you've put towards this work. And yeah, we'll definitely let you know anything, any ways you can help. And I'll definitely get that transcript and that video over to you and everything like that when it's ready. So thank you so much for your time.

Logan: Yeah.

Hannah: Absolutely.

Logan: You want to say bye?

Hannah: Bye.

Logan: No, just wants to sit on my lap. Okay. Well, thanks for taking the time.

Hannah: Absolutely. Of course. Of course. And if you have any further questions or anything like that, just let me know-

Logan: Okay, will do.

Hannah:... And we will work on... Absolutely. Have a great weekend.

Logan: Mo. Thanks. You too.

Hannah: Bye.