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In this episode of the Be the Bridge podcast, guest host Darryl Ford engages in a deep conversation with Dr. Ed Uszynski about critical race theory and its implications for racial reconciliation within the church. They explore Ed’s book,Untangling Critical Race Theory, and the historical context of CRT. You’ll hear about the importance of understanding systemic racism and the role of the church in addressing issues of race and justice. Their discussion is for everyone and will bring clarity and discernment to a topic mostly misunderstood and mischaracterized.
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Executive Producer – Latasha Morrison
Producer – Sarah Connatser
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Not all views expressed in this interview reflect the values and beliefs of Latasha Morrison or the Be the Bridge organization.
*this was transcribed by Spotify and has not been checked for errors
0:02
Welcome to the Be the Bridge podcast.
Be the Bridge exists to empower people and culture toward racial healing, equity, and reconciliation.
Latasha Morrison founded Be the Bridge in 2016 to foster needed dialogue and brave spaces and to give people the tools to pursue racial justice.
0:22
We provide resources and community to do just that, and this podcast is one of those resources.
You’ll hear interviews hosted by Latasha and our team, conversations about current events, and encouragement for your racial literacy journey.
Thank you for listening, subscribing and engaging in this important work.
0:43
Hello and welcome to the special episode of the Be the Bridge podcast.
I’m Darrell Ford, I’m guest hosting today and I’m so excited to be here with all of you.
For those of you who might be new to be the bridge, we’re a faith-based community committed to fostering racial reconciliation, healing, unity.
We want to do that through open dialogue, education, action, and we aim to bridge the gaps that divide us and create spaces when true understanding and justice can flourish.
1:08
Today’s conversation is going to be insightful and thought provoking as we dive deep into this issue of critical race theory, discussing some of the complexities therein, maybe exploring what it means also to live in a reconciled community.
So whether you’re listening in, whether you’re commuting, whether you’re on your couch, whether you wherever you find yourself today.
1:27
Thank you for joining us on this important journey towards bridge building and transformation.
With all of that said, we have a very special guest, Doctor Ed Uzinski.
He’s he’s been a content specialist for crew athletes in action family life for over 3 decades.
He also serves as a wonders and diversity consultant for church and para church organizations.
1:46
He’s written for a range of online platforms such as Desiring God, Mockingbird and The Washington Times.
He’s a frequent speaker and podcaster on topics of race, sport, culture and marriage.
With that, I’m introducing Mr. Edizinski.
Thanks so much for being with us.
2:02
It’s so good to have you.
Well, let’s let’s, let’s jump.
Let’s jump right in.
You have, you have written a book that has been quite a lightning ride.
Depending on what side of these aisles people come from.
You’re talking about a, a, a topic that has as of late, really over the last five or ten years, become just a major, like I said, a lightning rod, a point of division for, for some communities, some of it for lack of real understanding and folks maybe who do understand and may not agree.
2:32
Why write this book for for someone like yourself, why write it?
Why would I bring this trouble on?
Yes.
Sir.
Yes, Sir.
A.
Good question.
Hey.
And man, I had multiple people, both black brothers and white, who said when I told them I was thinking about doing this, they’re like, what are you crazy?
2:51
Like, why would you do that?
But even those guys that were saying that recognize the need for it.
And again, I don’t know, Darryl, that I’m necessarily saying anything that hasn’t been said before.
But I think my own background as a white skinned evangelical who has lived in, again, this is in the book, in the in the, you know, early in the book, I try to tell my story just to give some background to where I’m coming from.
3:15
I grew up on the West side of Cleveland in a very racially diverse and ethnically diverse area and became a, a Christian when I was in college at Kent State University.
So I came to Christ somewhat later.
And right away, man, I was thrown into an environment where I was asking lots of questions about, about how to make sense of what I grew up with in that melting pot of, of racial tensions and, and, and, you know, different races trying to live together.
3:45
But even more so now that I was a Christian, I was introduced to all the conflict and contradiction and blatant racism that’s existed within history.
And my, the majority of my ministry was to athletes, like you mentioned, athletes in action on Division One campuses and, and at the pro level.
4:05
And so, you know, I’m, I’m interacting with lots of black athletes as a white minister.
And so race has always been, you know, a topic right beneath the surface.
We’re we’re leading with the gospel, leading with Jesus.
And yet everybody that I’ve ever been in contact with in my own ministry and in my own life has been very affected by race.
4:27
So it’s actually been different for me even to be exposed to people who didn’t grow up that way and who, you know, race kind of comes into their social feed as almost an intrusion.
OK, I think there’s a lot of people that are that, that way.
That’s not the way I grew up.
4:43
Again, for what in God’s sovereignty, that’s not the way I grew up in my my ministry life, like I said, has been, has been in the midst of having conversations about race.
So I got exposed to critical race theory back in the 90s when it first became a thing, OK, And actually thought there were lots of questions being raised by critical race theorists and people that were adjacent to critical race theorists who were working primarily in the context of law, which we can maybe come back and talk more about that, especially since you’re a lawyer.
5:13
But even back 90’s the the applications were already starting to expand beyond law to ask questions like what is the racial history of this context that you find yourself in?
How has racism affected it?
To talk about what it means to center non white voices in, in your context to, you know, explore what color blindness means and, and why that can be problematic.
5:37
The way that term was even getting thrown around in the 90s.
I mean, all that came out of, you know, those just three examples of what came out of critical race theorizing.
I remember thinking it would have been great to have had a book back then that amongst Christians that made more sense of or took advantage of the questions that they were trying to get us to ask and apply them to the church.
5:59
And of course, that book wasn’t written.
And critical race theory really didn’t show up anywhere culturally until these last few years.
And then everybody, everybody lost their minds over it.
And so much of what was being said, I just thought, well, this, this is not actually even what critical race theory is.
6:16
And I skipped this part.
I went and did a PhD in 2008 at Bowling Green State University, and my PhD was basically grounded in critical theory, of which critical race theory was a piece of it.
6:32
And that wasn’t, I didn’t go there specifically to learn that, but it just ended up being a huge part of what my classes were about in the conversations we had.
That’s kind of an important piece here too, so.
Yeah.
Yeah, this felt like I lived at the at the intersection of all these different realities, my own background, my educational background, my life in ministry.
6:52
And it seemed like it was for such a time as this.
Actually, probably too.
It’s some ways it’s too late.
I wish we had this particular book 10 years ago, but here it is.
Wow, that’s that’s actually, that’s more than what most people can say about the research they’ve done.
Even before going into this, there have been folks who have written articles and done podcasts more about, I would say kind of their their best guess at what they’ve heard.
7:17
But you’ve actually dealt with what I would call kind of the source information that kind of goes into this having studied critical theory.
That’s it, that’s it.
That’s a huge step up.
You, you definitely are the person we need to be talking to for sure.
You know, here’s what I wanted to do.
There were two things that happened 1 Fox News got a hold of critical race theory, and I’m not putting all the blame on Fox News, but Fox News was a huge player in disseminating kind of this distorted version, some legitimate concerns.
7:43
I’m not, I’m going to say everything that was said was not worth talking about a thing about, but there was definitely a distortion of what CRT came to mean in that context.
So I really wanted to combat that.
I saw the same thing happening in some of the books that were becoming popular within Christian circles.
8:00
The only voices.
And again, I’m not even here to call people out.
We can if you if you want, but it’s like the the voices that that were writing about CRT were only doing so negatively.
They were only sounding warning alarms.
They were saying stuff like, you know, CRT and just this whole critical worldview is the greatest threat to the gospel since the Reformation and things like this.
8:20
And I’m just like, I’m not, I’m not really seeing that.
But the hysteria.
I’m not, I’m not seeing the alarm.
I’d see some legitimate concerns in terms of how things could be applied, but this hysteria doesn’t make sense.
But then the third thing that happened, oh, is when the when the SBC, when the Southern Baptist Convention happened in 2019.
8:41
And you know, there was a big around this whole idea of critical race theory and someone had put forward a proposal suggesting that everything that has anything to do with CRT is antithetical to the gospel.
And again, I’m just summarizing here.
And there were other Baptists who who had adjusted or adapted that proposal to say that there are sometimes that that critical race theory as a lens can be beneficial to the church.
9:07
OK.
And there’s, again, there was a meltdown around that the the conflict around those ideas.
And what I felt like wasn’t happening was I wanted those guys.
And maybe maybe they did in their own article writing and in their own circles.
But I wanted somebody to say how like, let’s slow down and let’s take the concepts.
9:25
Let’s take the tenants of critical race theory.
Let’s ask ourselves, what actually are they saying?
And then let’s ask how might these be applicable or helpful in church or parachurch or just Christian organizations under the umbrella of the gospel?
9:42
How might the questions that these tenants are trying to get us to ask be useful to us and create the kinds of conversations, even in the way you did your, your intro about be the bridge that would create conversations that would create healing that would put us in a place where we could dig beneath the surface on this topic and get to a better place.
10:00
And so that’s really what my book is trying to do is slow down, unpack it.
It’s actually literally called untangling critical race theory and asking how do we apply this within the Christian world that we find ourselves in.
Thank you for that.
I think that does lead me to the next to the next question and thinking about unpacking something like this is it’s helpful then to understand kind of what CRT is and it’s in coat phases and what what what is it really?
10:27
I think a lot of times my my big critique on the issue and just as means of background, I I spent time pastoring a church and we’re in the reformed theological tradition and planted a church out of a a big church here in the Atlanta area.
And when it was time to preach about race and I’ll never forget being invited to preach about race.
10:46
I preached about other things as well, but this happened to be the topic.
And in doing this, preaching from the tech, preaching Christologically a, a very, a hermeneutic with which they would have agreed.
And when we started talking about race, all of a sudden emails started flowing into the leadership about when did we start letting critical race theory be taught in this church and those kinds of things.
11:06
And so I’d love to just know and we can both talk, but but share a little bit about critical race theory, critical theory, as you’ve said, its origins within legal studies and and what role that plays in this conversation.
Yeah, well, you want to talk about critical theory or you want to talk about the word?
11:24
Critical theory, Well, I’d, I’d love to, we can talk about critical race theory.
You’ve already mentioned obviously that it kind of is born out of critical theory, but just sharing for folks who may not understand the kind of the legal foundation that this comes from.
First, is that legal background that it comes from?
11:41
Yeah, And maybe some listeners are familiar with the name, maybe some not.
But Derek Bell, he’s kind of considered the father of critical race theory.
Derek Bell was a lawyer.
He was a civil rights lawyer.
And so when the civil rights Levis legislation of the 60s became official and it was no longer legal to be outwardly racist, Jim Crow was no longer allowed to be the law of the land.
12:08
And we both smile because we, we got to know this went underground, right?
And so, and that was kind of Darius Point.
He was a lawyer who was fighting for, for school integration cases.
And he was, he was fighting to try to, to make the civil rights legislation become realized in real time and real people’s lives.
12:27
And so a decade or so after he’s doing all this work and he, he is a he’s a hard worker.
He’s fighting in, in the courts.
He realizes that for all the work they’re doing, things really haven’t changed that much.
And he starts to actually ask the question is, is my own profession?
12:44
Is the legal profession and the laws that are in place, are they actually preventing, even though yes, there’s been these, you know, these major proclamations from the White House and bills that were signed into law?
Has the law system itself and all the different lanes that you can wind up going down when it comes to law?
13:03
It is it so codified, is racism so codified in it that you still wind up with racist results at the end of the day that you can say that it’s no longer legal to discriminate and yet you’ve created housing policy that makes it almost impossible for non white people to get loans and to live where they want to live.
13:22
And you can create, you know, what do you call neighborhood policies that will, you know, again, they’re lesser laws, but there’s still law that’s in place that will trump whatever the civil rights legislation said.
So that’s a lot of words.
I don’t know if that even makes sense to people is Derek Bell and other lawyers said maybe, maybe laws are actually helping to maintain the system.
13:45
I mean, it does great irony in that the law should be setting people free.
And yet it seems to almost be getting in the way.
And so Bell and other scholars over time began to theorize about that and ask, what is it that’s happening in this country right now that is still allowing racism to be to feel like it’s just as alive and well in its effects, even if we’re not outwardly, you know, there’s not fire hoses, you know, on the nightly news in the 70s, but you still have racist impulse and you still have racist consequence in people’s lives.
14:21
They started to ask questions about that.
And really, Darrell, you know, again, after having these conversations now, even over the last year, really trying to even get my own mind around how to summarize what was happening.
I feel like what those men and women were doing where they were confronting a particular race narrative that was alive and kicking back in the late 60s, seventies, 80s, and is still alive today.
14:45
And that is that we’re, we’re good now.
There’s not a race problem.
I mean, they weren’t using the language of being in a post racial society.
Then that that came after Obama and you know, the last 10 years or so that that became kind of an idea that that circulates popularly.
15:03
But that’s how people were wanting to live, even even non white folks.
It’s like, man, these laws have been signed.
Let’s just get on with business.
Let’s let’s just get on with life and we’re not going to deal with race anymore.
And they were like, with that gone you, we’ve had this in place for literally centuries.
15:23
And you think that by signing a couple things on a pieces of paper, it’s just going to completely remove the effects and remove the consequences and change people’s minds and hearts, which is what was behind the racist impulse in the first place.
That’s just a naive position.
15:40
And I feel they’ve they’ve been fighting against that narrative and almost and trying to have a a counter narrative.
So OK, if you’re going to say that racism doesn’t exist anymore, we’ll swing the pendulum all the way back over here and say it’s endemic.
It never goes away.
15:56
Try that on.
You want to talk about being color blind?
How about this?
Your color blindness just is, is a cover for a new form of racism because of course it’s you see color.
You can’t even suggest that you don’t see color.
16:11
And so you’re missing out on actually the, the differences that are actually supposed to be embraced and, and trading that in for a new form of racism basically.
So that’s basically what they were doing.
It’s almost like every one of the tenants that came up was a counter to this, this impulse that we’re OK now, let’s just get on with life.
16:34
I’ll say one more thing about it.
Deal.
This, this is what I think is really interesting that literally for centuries in this country, and again, if you just step back from it and just look at history and read books, read narratives, read people’s biographies, literally across centuries, white folks had no problem making race a very significant issue.
16:55
Everybody knew what it meant to be white.
Everybody knew what it meant not to be white.
We had signs to hang up to tell you.
We had laws that were in place and it was made a significant issue.
And it was non white folks across the centuries that were saying, hey, can we just all be human beings?
17:12
Can we not put so much emphasis on race?
Can we?
Can we just be the human race?
OK.
And then in the 60s again, a couple of these laws get signed and now of a sudden it’s white folks are like, oh, we don’t do race anymore.
We don’t want to talk about race.
We don’t see race.
17:28
We’re colorblind.
And it was black folks all of a sudden predominantly.
And again, that’s kind of the the lane that I’ve run in, but lots of non white folks that said, wait a second time out.
No, like we’re going to talk about race now we have to talk about race.
It is still a, a significant lens through which to view society.
17:46
You can’t just like now run and hide from it or act like it doesn’t exist anymore.
You’re like, that’s what’s been going on for the last 50 years.
I’m 56.
And so in my conscious years of interacting with people, I just find that very ironic that all now all of a sudden we don’t want to talk about groups when, you know, white evangelicals that I hang out with, we, we can’t talk about groups.
18:07
We don’t know what it means to be white.
We, you know, how can you talk this way?
And it’s like all our grandparents understood it very, very clearly what’s happened to us.
Well, to that, to that hand, yeah.
So, so thinking, thinking about that.
No, no, but but it’s necessary.
18:25
And I think I’m really hoping that people that digest this, because if we had weeks, it’d be fun to kind of walk through.
Not fun, but it’d be really helpful, I think to tee some of that out.
My, my question would be for those within those evangelical lanes, why would it be helpful for them to understand?
18:43
Obviously there are multiple approaches that people have taken that evangelicals have taken in, in talking about race.
Some the color blind approach has been one huge one.
I think of some of the attempts at during the promise keepers days when talking about race, what is there?
18:59
What can the Christian gain?
You’re you’re you have a chapter that talks a little bit about this, but what can the Christian gain from your that’s have to talk more about critical theory, but I’m asking what can they gain from understanding critical race theory?
You know, the word, Darrell, that I keep coming back to is, is understanding.
19:16
I mean, that’s ultimately what I think rightly used critical race theory produces within A and a Christian who is anchored in the word of God, right.
Who’s whose commitment is to be in the world but not of the world, OK, but to be salt and light while in the world, to be driven by the Great Commission.
19:40
Like I still, I love all this language.
And to me what that means is I have all people should be motivated just from a missiological standpoint, from a missions standpoint, I should be motivated to try to understand the people that live around me, different races that live around me.
20:01
In my neighborhood, in my community, in my church, in my denomination, in my para church organization, I have all people have a motivation to try to understand what it’s like to live in their skin.
Like that’s what I think the body of Christ is supposed to be about.
20:19
That we understand all the different parts of the the way that God has made us different in the way that God has given us different experiences under the cross to become one new man 1 new body called the Church.
20:34
That like we have all places should be a people where we are removing the dividing wall as Ephesians talks about, you know, a lot of people want to throw that around that the death and the resurrection of Jesus absolutely remove the dividing wall between US and God.
20:51
And positionally it’s that is absolutely true.
But conditionally, the way that it’s going to get itself worked out amongst the people of God is going to require work like the dividing wall just doesn’t disappear between all of us as human beings.
21:07
I have to do the work to be able to remove the dividing wall to become one as Jesus also prayed that would be true of us to become one.
I have to do work.
So when you ask what does critical race theory do?
21:24
Critical race theory helps me ask the types of questions that should bring understandable again, and I don’t need to tell you, but I it’s not like there’s one monolithic black experience in America either, right?
So I’m not trying to play that card.
I know that just like there’s not one monolithic white experience, but there are definitely some patterns to our histories.
21:46
There are definitely some common experiences that have tended to be true for whether it’s black folks or white folks.
And for the most part, white people have been able to get by without having to pay much attention to other people’s experiences, other non, non white people’s experience.
22:03
I mean, that’s just the truth.
I’ve, I’ve always felt that even when I was in high school, I remember just feeling, recognizing, and I went to a pretty mixed school, but it was still more whites than it was blacks.
And there was a bunch of, there’s a lot of Puerto Rican folks that were in my community as well.
22:20
But I still remember thinking that my white friends, they’re not really forced to understand black culture, but my black friends seem like they have to understand white culture.
They have to bend to it.
They have to adjust to it.
They have to pay attention to the police in ways that my white friends don’t, they?
22:39
They have mostly white teachers and people in authority over them, which I just take for granted as a white person, right?
Stuff like that.
So why I thought critical Race Theory was beneficial then as much as I do now is that it will stop to try to help me understand why people are seeing the world differently than I am.
23:00
Best the understanding piece is I think there are many folks who have sent have been saying, if nothing else, if we just, if there’s a way for us to know that we’re talking about the same thing when we talk about these issues, that would make folks feel like they’re being much more holistically heard.
23:16
And so I think that’s a, that’s a, that’s a, that’s a really good word.
You know, in, in talking about CRT, we know that one of one of the insights there is that racism is not just a matter of individual prejudice.
I think, you know, we talk about this a lot and what people get wrong about race that people typically think about racism as do I have individual animus that this person who is not white or, you know, do I use the N word?
23:38
Do I burn crosses?
You know, those kinds of things.
And, and so folks feel good, right?
Because hey, I’m, I’m not guilty of these and they’re mine racism when really it’s just one expression of individual prejudice, right?
But all of that happens at the expense or to the exclusion of focusing on racism embedded in systems and structural that you talked about before.
23:59
One way that I’ve put it is, you know, our history, our our country history is 1 replete with examples of people that will pray for someone who looks like me on a Sunday and then vote to disenfranchise me on a Tuesday.
So, so in in thinking about that, how how do you talk about that in your book as far as the perspective on systemic versus individual racism?
24:22
Well, and again, this is a, this is a topic that people lose their minds about.
And the people that I’ve actually had around me as mentors and disciples, it wasn’t that big of a deal to them to say that racism comes to us both through individual choices and individual attitudes, and it’s embedded in the systems and structures around us.
24:41
Like I just that that’s how I was discipled.
OK.
So it’s always kind of been a matter of fact to me because of my own church back.
I went to a mixed church when I, when I became a Christian again.
So there’s some advantages to that.
So because it seems like it’s it should be pretty obvious that when there are patterns and there’s policies, there’s procedures that have been in place for a long, long time that have been literally put in place for racist reasons.
25:09
If those patterns, policies and procedures have not been checked, if there’s not been an intervention, if there’s not been something that’s come along to say, yeah, we need to reverse this or confront it, then it would make sense that even 50 years later, you would, you would still have racist things happening even if there’s not, you know, clan members in your midst.
25:32
For example, Christian schools.
I use this example in in the book and I think it’s, I think it’s just a solid one.
There’s so many Christian schools that were started in the 1970s that were started for at least one of their reasons being that they that they were white Christian folks who didn’t want their kids going to school with black kids.
25:53
They didn’t want to or they didn’t want to even go to school with city kids.
You know, wherever these kids are coming from, whether they’re white or black, we don’t want them.
Mostly black kids are bussing in over here.
So, well, they didn’t want their kids going to school, OK.
And so they, they literally built into their foundations ways to make sure that they could maintain keeping it the way they wanted to keep it.
26:15
I’ve had these conversations with several different Christian schools, people that were around when those kinds of decisions were being made.
So if nobody’s actually gone and like I said, created an intervention to check the policies, the patterns, the procedures, is it any wonder that our whole faculty is white?
26:35
Even though we’re living, we have a, we have, our school is in a community that’s actually racially diverse all around us, but our whole faculty is white.
The, the preponderance of the kids that are in our school are white.
The topics that we talked about lean in the direction of what’s considered white evangelicalism.
26:55
The verses that we pay attention to, the social issues we’re willing to talk about, how we interpret current events that are happening.
We’ll all be running through this lens that was that was created in racist soil.
Again, people lose their minds when you talk that way to him because immediately people get defensive and get offended.
27:16
And I’ve tried to have these conversations and say, look, remove yourself from the conversation for a second.
Will you just explore what it is that I just said to you that this school started?
It started for this reason.
It was sent in a particular direction in the way it’s curriculum, who gets money and how money gets distributed.
27:36
That’s a whole nother one how scholarship money gets divided out, right?
Well, you just go explore that and then ask yourself why is it that it looks the way it does in our school right now?
It still looks the same now as it did 50 years ago.
We’re still talking about the same things now as 50 years ago.
27:53
Money is still distributed largely in the same way now as it was 50 years ago.
Does that not cause any alarms to go off that maybe that’s why there’s only 6 black kids in a school of 400 kids or whatever, right?
Why we’ve got 2 black teachers out of 30.
28:10
So you asked how does well let me happen systemically or how does it how does it maintain systemically without people even realizing it that it’s going?
Well, and I would ask, you know, the specifically those in the community of faith, you know, obviously within not just, you know, any, any community of faith has their list of things that are major things, major things about which we have much umbrage, major things about which we have a lot of vitriol.
28:35
We have certain things that we look at as abominations, right?
With that’s a word that would get thrown around a lot and, and things that we can see clearly, objectively, God calls sin.
And we, we will highlight that.
But it does seem like there is kind of selective outrage for certain things and not others.
28:50
And you know, one of the things we see, we know the scripture says clearly that unequal weights and measures are an abomination to God.
And so for that to be an abomination, right?
But the vitriol around that is nowhere near as high as the vitriol around some other issues we could talk about.
So when you, I hear you when you’re like, you know, folks, these things are happening and they don’t realize it or they don’t see it.
29:09
And I’m wondering, is it is it they don’t see it or they have another explanation for why it’s there When they see like, well, you know, if there aren’t black kids that live in this area or aren’t enough black people that live in this area, they just don’t individually work hard enough or they don’t have these, you know, they have other answers there that might be rooted in some racial issues.
29:27
What?
What?
What do you think?
Yeah, it’s it’s epistemological ignorance.
I was reading another book.
I’ve actually got it sitting right here.
The religion of whiteness.
This came this came out of the Great One.
OK, well, you know, one of the one of the terms that they use is epistemological ignorance, where there’s there’s sort of a commitment almost to remaining ignorant about these kinds of things.
29:50
And you said maybe they don’t know they’re there, which I granted, I think most of my white evangelical friends, they’ve never even thought about those things being there.
They’ve had the privilege, other word that is just causes people to lose their mind.
The privilege of not having to notice it or not being aware of it because all the advantages set up for them and their kids.
30:13
Epistemological ignorance.
I use the term ethical indifference, that we’ve been allowed to just be ethnically indifferent.
We don’t have to feel what other people are feeling.
And again, this isn’t just, this isn’t just for white folks.
30:29
I think, I think any racial group can fall into this where we become so attached to our own tribe and either so angry or so whatever negative emotion towards people that are outside of our tribe, we just justify not caring.
30:45
Whatever happens to him, we don’t care.
And that’s why I say even this Daryl, my greatest concern is not trying to figure out where the racists are in the room.
Like I gave up on that a long, long time ago.
I that that ends up getting argued about in secular culture and politically and everything.
And I’m not saying that there’s not any reason to have concern about people that are still blatantly racist and the white replacement theories and and a lot of what even when I hear in Christian nationalism.
31:10
Yeah, no, we should we should cringe at that and people need to stand up against that.
I still think the larger problem in most most of our congregations has more to do with indifference and a failure to love then it does some kind of a blatant racism.
31:28
It’s it’s a superiority or a supremacy.
Again, that doesn’t come through hooded cloak, you know, it’s not riding a horse setting fires to things like overtly clan.
It’s just absorbing and embracing a superiority that never gets talked about, rarely gets poked, and that I can just kind of comfortably live in without even realizing that I’m.
31:50
I am sitting at the top of a hierarchy in a culture that has always made life an organized life around my needs, my wants, and my normal.
I’m saying this as a white guy and that as a Christian.
And again, like I, I don’t feel the need to talk about these things because I’m being forced by some human resources department to do it or because progressive politics is winning the day within the church I like.
32:17
I’m not even, I am listening to that.
Obviously it is a part of the narrative, but that’s not what’s motivating me to, to try to take race more seriously and to to continue to say I need to get better at caring about other people.
I need to do, again, more work in the sense that I need to invest energy in trying to understand why this is important to you.
32:42
I need to lay aside beginning defensive or trying to argue for my point.
Just lay that aside long enough that I actually can try to put your shoes on and see the world the way you’re seeing it.
I’m saying this as a white man to you, a black man, but it can go out in any direction, even from me as a man to a woman, a woman.
32:59
That’s right.
Intersectionality is another one that just makes people lose their minds.
And I remember the first time I heard intersectionality talked about in the early 2000s.
And again, I just shrugged my shoulders.
Like that’s the most obvious thing in the world, that if you’re, if you’re a woman in a room full of men.
33:17
Yeah.
I mean, I saw this happen all the time in my parent church organization, in the church spaces where I’ve been an elder, you know, I’ve been at a leadership table.
It is so easy for a woman’s voice to be trampled almost no matter what the nomination you’re part of, but especially if you’re part of denominations that haven’t really held women’s voices up very well.
33:36
That’s right.
Oh, and now her skin is black.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
And she’s in a room with all white men.
Oh, it totally makes sense that there would be multiple levels of oppression she might experience.
Like, I had those conversations all the time with my female friends outside the meeting.
So I think that’s a hopeful rubric.
33:54
Again, intersectionality can wind up meaning a bunch of other things that can be applied in lots of different ways, but it’s kind of fundamental.
It’s asking me to put on the shoes of what it feels like to be a woman or a black woman or an older black woman with a bunch of young Theo Bros, right?
34:13
I have, I have a Christian obligation to say, let me separate from this for a second and see what that feels like so that I can minister to her.
I can value her.
I can uphold her voice in a way that she’s genuinely included.
And she’s not just there to be the black woman representing the black woman boy, right?
34:32
Like no, I need her to be included in how I’m thinking about the world.
That make sense?
Yeah, that’s yeah, it does.
And it’s interesting.
I’m glad you brought up intersectionality, given that the woman who coined that is another disciple of Derek Bell, Kimberly Crenshaw, who was also a huge part of CRT.
34:49
So that’s a good a good throw in.
Yeah.
I’m, I’m curious when we look at when we have these conversations, I say we just within church sections, you know, folks will we’ll talk about this.
And you’re right.
I mean, I agree.
I think that there aren’t people who are intentionally going.
35:06
I can’t wait to make it hard on these, you know, this people group.
I mean, there may be some, but by and large folks are not walking around, waking up going how, what can I do to make things, you know, less advantageous for, you know, group XY or Z.
But we also know just historically, you look back and you see, you go back to the times of the 50s and 60’s, the Medgar Evers, the Martin Luther King, the Malcolm X is all these folks and more.
35:28
The Fannie Lou Hammers the the and, and to go even further back, the Ida B Wells, these folks who have been pointing out that these, that these injustices exist.
And, and so it’s hard.
I only bring this up because, you know, I have friends who are from, I’m from Detroit, but I have friends from Chicago and some of my white friends who have grown up in Chicago, growing up, their families are from the Chicagoland area.
35:51
And I know that for them, their grandparents were very young kids.
Maybe not they some of their grandparents were young adults during the time that Emmett Till was killed.
Of course, Emmett Till’s from Chicago.
It was front page of the news.
It was all over the, the radio and they were listening to the radio.
36:08
Those who had TV’s could watch, you know, the procession because his mother wanted his body to be on display.
We know the story and folks would see that, right?
It it wasn’t that they just didn’t know.
As you said, they practiced a little bit of that indifference and, and, and I would say kind of creating another explanation sometimes for why that might have happened.
36:30
And if they didn’t create an explanation, if they didn’t, the one thing I was pointing out to some friends who said, you know, whether it was your parents or your grandparents, they taught you to be indifferent because it wasn’t like at the dinner table, there was a conversation around, man, that is really messed up that that young boy went down XY and Z Wow.
36:46
We’ve heard a number of other things that have happened.
A few years later, Megar Everett gets shot and a few years later we see what happens to to Doctor King.
We see when those things are happening.
The bigger question is why aren’t these conversations being had?
That’s right.
When these big lightning rod moments happen, like what’s what is it within the church that allows them to be silent?
37:06
I just in that part of that with one of the, the denomination of the church that we had planted out of had a big, they were born.
We weren’t a part of that denomination, but they planted this.
And I think one of the, one of the progenitors of the, of the denomination born out in the 70s roughly was speaking and they were talking about race and they’re kind of big kind of General Assembly, if you will, and was basically saying, listen, things were hard back then and we probably should have spoke up for more things.
37:33
But ultimately we were so busy trying to get some denomination off the ground that we just didn’t have time for it.
My, my bigger issue here is it’s not that people are just ignorant of those things because they’re not ignorant around other issues that we care about.
If it’s abortion, people have no problem spending, funding, voting, doing all these things using every lever of power available.
37:55
But when it comes to people of color, all of a sudden the levers of power don’t know what to do.
Including the pulpit, by the way.
Willing to use the pulpit to talk about it and devote days, but keep going, yes?
No, no, that’s it.
That’s.
It well, why do you think let me let me just keep let you yeah, bring that to conclusion.
38:11
Why do you think that is?
Yeah, your own experience, Like, yeah, why do you think that?
You know, I mean, I think that I think that we as practitioners of the gospel, we understand that the ultimate sin is this inward curvature towards self that that.
38:32
And so for me, I feel like that myself included.
I think that, you know, when I look at what makes me most comfortable, it’s people that remind me of me, people that remind me of things about me, whether it’s points of affinity, whether it’s skin tone, whether it’s culture, whether it’s, you know, if I like hip hop, man, that’s a really great way to connect.
38:48
I’m a musician.
I love to play those things are and that’s natural that that that’s normal.
But when it gets exalted to the level of an idol now, when there are things that might require me to, to give up a position of, of power or authority or to divest myself.
39:06
You know, the example you used about being a man in a room that’s dominated by men and you might have one or two women, especially black women.
There’s a divestiture of kind of male power that needs to happen that only humility would bring me to.
But I think because I’m so in a self Worshipful mindset, whether I realize it or not, I can’t do it.
39:29
And so now if if I’m a part, even though I didn’t have anything to do with with maybe building these structures, I’m listen you, you brought up something man, that was so convicting for me.
And we were I remember us sitting just to talk about the man woman thing.
I remember us picking a song.
39:44
We’d done a song for for worship and it was a popular song and there was a lyric in there that was something to the extent of like there’s no door, God won’t kick in, running after me, or it’s a popular song, what have you.
Nothing wrong with it at all.
Nothing wrong with the lyrics.
I would never.
But a woman came and mentioned something.
40:02
She was on our staff, she said.
You know, there are women who have been assaulted and those lyrics become a trigger for them that ultimately creates a difficulty for them to be able to worship because of things that may have happened right now.
The easy thing would be.
No, no, no, no, no, you don’t understand the intention behind.
40:20
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That was another one, you know, yeah, we could do it.
We could.
Oh, and and and ministries have done it.
Or is it like, am I so married to having to do this song?
Can I not?
You know, if if Jesus was willing to give up his privilege, he thought it not equal to be to, you know, robbery to be equal with God.
40:38
If he’s able to lay that to the side in order to I would say stewardess privilege for the benefit of those who don’t have it.
That’s ultimate humility.
And I think that’s where our sin, our sin nature really comes up.
Man, I was just looking it up.
Darrell do nothing from rivalry or conceit.
40:55
Amen.
In humility, count others more significant than yourselves.
That’s it.
Let each of you not only look to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.
Have this mind among yourselves which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, although he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, right?
41:17
That’s right.
It’s interesting.
I very rarely hear that verse preached in this context, but you just did a little mini devotional around it.
It’s like, that’s why we do.
That’s why we’re motivated to do whatever it takes to try to understand again.
Let’s use whatever language we need to try to understand to try to divest myself of power again.
41:38
I don’t have to give that up because I’m white, right?
Exactly.
I’m.
A Christian right?
That’s right.
Amen.
I’m a Christian.
I look for ways to use my power to elevate others, okay, above myself.
Again, this is such foreign language to all of us.
41:54
Yeah, I’m willing to change the narrative.
I tell myself about myself.
How about that?
Because that, that’s, that’s another thing going to what you’re saying.
Besides not wanting to divest myself of the power I have to have what I want, I also don’t want to change the narrative that I’ve for a long time have told myself about my own righteousness is really what I mean.
42:14
And in different ways, you think about how this even applies to marriage, right?
Yeah, yeah, we go off in.
Different directions with this, but.
That’s right.
That’s.
Right.
I, I think I’m right all the time and she thinks she’s right all the time.
Like somebody’s going to even have to change the narrative of being right all the time to try to under, you know, why does she think she’s right?
42:35
What am I missing?
And I was put here actually to make her life easier, to lift her up before the Lord.
What if I took that same kind of attitude again?
Not even enough of us take that within the church.
We don’t take that.
That’s right.
That’s right.
We don’t take any marriage enough.
That’s right.
What if I extended that same thing to other brothers and sisters who are different from me in any number of ways, racially being the top one that we’re talking about here?
42:58
Yeah.
I divest myself of my power.
I lift them up and I try to understand what it’s like to go through life in their shoes.
That’s Philippians 2.
That’s what love looks like.
That’s what Agape looks like.
I’m going to do what’s best for you in spite of what it costs me.
The gospel is just all over this mentality.
43:15
OK.
Yeah.
Why don’t we do it is because it’s a demonic stronghold.
Can we just?
Come on, come.
On yeah, let’s just re emphasize that’s low hanging fruit, but it needs to be we need to be reminded like this is a demonic stronghold that’s been used across centuries and around the world.
43:33
Racism where we hate each other, where we oppress each other on the basis of some external thing that was created, that God created about us.
We hate each other on that basis and we we scar and mar the imago day being created in God’s image gets gets marred.
43:52
That’s a satanic thing, man.
Yeah, right.
And America’s Got its own version of it.
We’ve got our own, our own heinous, treacherous version of it, and we’re still living with the consequences of it.
And as a white person again, do I need to feel guilty about what everybody else did or didn’t?
44:09
I’m not even getting into that.
My people encourages me to continue to repent and be mindful of the sins of the forefathers.
It reminds me that whatever sin was in the forefathers that I don’t currently see in myself is lurking right beneath the surface, ready to come out.
44:26
Time, if I’m honest with myself and that if this is a demonic stronghold, but I need to keep praying that God would be gracious and merciful to us and help us be agents of healing in this space instead of trying to defend and trying to assert my righteousness and my people’s righteousness and continue to be ethnically indifferent and epistemologically ignorant, you know?
44:53
Oh, yeah, yeah.
No, no, no.
And I wanted to ask you, as you said this, you talk about healing.
And look, I’m so thankful for the words you’re using.
I’ve, I’ve been saying for a while that there’s, there’s an epistemological crisis.
We can’t even agree on how we know what we claim to know.
45:08
So that’s why we don’t have the same language on this, right.
And history is a huge part of that.
Some of the history you just shared, there are differing histories that they’re living down here in the South.
The history of those segregation schools that you describe, people have an alternate history.
45:24
And so when you have an alternate church history on issues, but you know, you talk about this, this healing and what it looks like to heal.
In your book, you talk about healing from the persistence of white supremacy.
I want you to talk about that.
But I also want you to talk about that against the backdrop of many folks within these evangelical spaces who would see what you’re doing as divisive.
45:45
Well, to, you know, you’re bringing up these topics, you’re talking about these topics.
It’s this causes more division in the church than it does healing.
How do you respond to that?
And then I’d love for you to talk about what real healing looks like.
Yeah, my response to that is, and I again, I, I run with a lot of different people, man, White, black or young, I get to run with a lot of different people.
46:07
So for those people around me who are just wanting to go back to some unity that we had before, the unity that we experience when we don’t talk about these things, I’ve come to the conclusion that’s not really unity.
That’s that’s sort of a benevolent tolerance.
46:27
It’s like as long as I have my normal and as long as I have my comfort and as long as I have my, my way of being is upheld, my styles, my, the, the way I want things to be.
And you’re part of that.
And that’s what unity has been too often amongst too many of my white evangelical friends.
46:49
And I don’t think again in my conversations with my black friends, well, they’re not necessarily feeling a unity.
They just feel like they’ve assimilated themselves to this or they, they’re willing to go along with what they have to go along with to make this work, which is why now you get guys like Lecrae or Jamar Tisbee talking about leaving life order.
47:08
It’s like like we don’t have to do this anymore, right?
Like there’s an anger behind that that says, I don’t want to just be assimilated to your, your normal anymore.
I want you to actually divest yourself and learn what it would mean to really be integrated and included with each.
Other, yeah.
47:24
You don’t actually want that.
That’s what Unity would be.
You want something else when you talk about wanting to go back or this is divisive talk, I actually think this is the pathway to genuine body life and genuine inclusivity and genuine integration.
47:44
Again, whatever words we want to use, it’s the pathway to being the church for as long as the Lord allows us to live here and look different than the rest of the world.
That’s that’s actually the pathway to get there.
Everything else is somewhat of a lie.
48:00
Again, that’s maybe too strong for people to be able to.
It’s not Unity.
It’s you were playing the same word games that people play when they want to turn CRT into something other than what it is or any of these words that kind of get spun and twisted around.
Unity means we’re going to talk about these hard things.
48:19
We’re going to be honest about them.
And if you’re telling me there’s still a dividing wall between us, I need to find out why that is and do work to listen.
I need to hear what your story is and what your pain is and where your anger comes from.
And you know, all of these things there.
48:36
I remember this.
This will sound kind of random.
I haven’t really been able to share.
But I just thought of it again the other day because I wanted to write about it in the book and I didn’t get to this must have been 1989.
I was on the campus of Kent State, wasn’t doing anything on this particular night.
And I’d seen this flyer for this, this rap group, hip hop group that was going to be there.
48:53
I’m like, I’m just going to go to this thing.
It was being held in this big education space.
It wasn’t even in a concert hall.
It was just in this big auditorium.
And so I went in and it was mostly black folks there.
And so I just went, I sat way up at the top.
You know, I was, it was, I was just going to kind of create my own space way up at the top.
49:13
And all of a sudden, these dudes came out on stage in full military gear.
And then the base drop down.
And I remember kind of like getting scared because like the roof was shaking while I was sitting and it was loud and crazy.
Then this dude came out that had a big clock around his neck.
49:30
Never seen him.
You see where this is going?
And then Chad D comes out, right?
So they kind of college tour.
Nobody had ever even heard a Public Enemy before.
I remembered listening to the lyrics, and there was this energy in the room, and it was anger.
49:47
And it was like this, this release that was being produced.
And obviously their lyrics were socially conscious and they were they were confrontational, right?
And that kind of rap didn’t exist yet.
And I just remembered sitting there thinking, this is this is where this is going.
50:05
I thought, first, they’re not doing this for me, OK?
Like, this is not like this is not for white people right now.
This is an Arctic.
These dudes are creating some kind of cathartic thing.
Yeah, It doesn’t really involve me.
OK, right now.
50:21
Yeah, number.
One yeah #2 Daryl, I remember thinking, like, what?
Again, we’re talking 19891990.
Like, what is this anger?
Like I even come from this kind of background where I’ve been exposed to something, but I haven’t been exposed to the coastal anger, right?
50:36
That’s right.
That’s right, city anger.
That’s right.
And also I would just add the, the, the, the freedom for folks like that to make that available for public consumption.
You never saw that.
And those dudes weren’t being played on the radio.
Like that’s a whole nother conflict, right?
50:53
They were.
They created fear.
They created fear, fear of a black nation, right?
It’s like they were purposely saying we’re sticking this in your eyes.
Yes, that’s right.
Again, as a sociologist and as a relatively new Christian, I’m asking myself the question, like, where, where is this coming from?
51:13
Like, I can’t get in touch with this, even though I think I’m racially conscious and kind of grew up around this.
Like, no, these dudes are representing something that’s way more guttural.
And yeah, OK, so you can explain it away.
You can call it state music, right?
51:28
There’s a whole bunch of ways not to pay attention to it or you can’t.
You can go deeper into me more man like why, why do you feel this way?
Let me read some more.
Let me read the background of these lyrics.
Let me let me talk to these kids that seem like they’re trying to get something out of their soul in the front of this stage right like that.
51:47
That’s an option for people.
I think that’s what Christians, I think we should be known more for doing that kind of a thing instead of everything we’ve already said.
Taking sides to myself, separating, coming up with an excuse for why they’re doing what they’re doing, listening to whatever superficial political reason is given and not doing any kind of introspection to say, how have I like missed out on this whole thing?
52:15
Like this has been going on in the same world I’ve been living in.
Like, how do I not know about this?
And how do I learn to get beneath it?
The answer right?
I’m not, so I get it.
But but they were tapping into something that that people in the church felt too.
52:32
Right.
Exactly, exactly.
Yeah.
And I would just, I would add, I mean, I would say that much of that there are folks and, and even ways of thinking that we may not always fully agree with or even identify with, but they do a good job of explicating what the problem is or at least in their world, right, that we may not understand, right.
52:51
And, and so, like I, you know, you may make a good point in bringing up, I think in part of your book, you’re talking about the, both the, the, the, the, the healthy way of viewing the connection or at the alleged connection between Marxism and CRT.
But one of the things that that is helpful is things like that, even that maybe we don’t agree with the outcome or the landing of some of those things, but they do a great job of, of showing where the problems are.
53:16
One of the things, and I’ll ask this last question, I don’t want to take all your day because brother, I can talk to you for the rest of the week.
One of the things that I think that division question, and I would imagine that again with the as you have such a diverse group of folks, you’re around when you are around some of those kind of white evangelicals that are on that side of the fence and they’re like, man, listen, I can’t, I don’t know, I can’t rock with it.
53:36
I don’t get it.
I don’t understand or I disagree.
And and what you’re doing is divisive.
I know that for for me pastorally, there would be, you know, we had a church full of different folks.
And so the white folks that would be there, that likely would come from maybe some of them more so than than others.
53:53
And, and what probably bothers me the most.
One of the things that bothers me the most is ultimately what our job is when we talk about preaching the gospel, the whole gospel of the unadulterated gospel, what sin is, what sin has done, what the work of redemption should be the fruit that should be coming up in in us as a result.
54:14
When, when we’re talking about the body of Christ and we’re trying to explain the folks, Hey, there’s, there’s a sickness in the body like there is.
And it has manifested itself in a number of ways.
But here’s one way that we’re trying to show that it that it exists.
And when we begin to just do what an oncologist does, when an oncologist says, hey, we’ve done some scans and we see that there is cancer that has been located in this part of your body.
54:40
Do you know how asinine it would be for me to go?
I prefer to think of my body as whole.
And what you have said to me is divisive.
I’d rather shop around for a better diagnosis so that I feel better.
People die in cancer.
But some people, for real people, have faced the truth of it.
54:57
Right.
They don’t.
And I think that’s where I think that’s where that’s where we are.
And I, I would just, I know, I mean, I’m thankful because of what at least I, I don’t want to be presumptuous.
It seems like that the primary audience that you’ve written this book for are folks that maybe have been wrestling largely in some of those white evangelical spaces that I’m sure it’s open to everybody, but it does seem like it’s targeting that.
55:18
Is that right?
It’s for me, yeah.
I wrote it to and all the people that are like me.
Gosh, fair enough.
Yeah, white evangelicals who grew up, and I try to say this very clearly at the beginning, grew up with a particular form of evangelicalism.
55:34
That’s right, yeah.
Wasn’t paying attention to these kinds of issues, right?
It’s associated to the religious right.
It’s very wed to to to the Republican Party.
Sure, for different.
Kinds of reasons good and bad, right?
All different reasons it there there’s a a lack of education just a general genuine ignorance being without knowledge about the black experience.
55:53
It grew up, you know, maybe in a more sheltered kind of way, theologically sheltered sociologically.
That wasn’t so much true for me, like I said.
But yeah, that’s the Christianity that I stepped into back in 1988.
I think that when we talk white evangelicalism, that’s what most people have in mind, right?
56:13
Again, there’s all kinds of strands inside of that.
That’s what people have in mind.
Yes.
That is who I’m writing it for.
It’s interesting.
I do think non people that are not in that category can benefit from it because I think that too many black Christians have are running from CRT in ways that they actually don’t need to.
56:31
You know, like I thank you.
So my black men say I’m not I’m not a critical race theorist.
I’m like, well, you don’t have to say it.
I’d like to know what you.
I always, I think that’s always a good question to ask.
Like what exactly do you mean?
And why is that causing you to feel so much fear?
Yeah, yeah.
Because again, what I’m arguing in the book to a number of chapters is here.
56:51
Let’s just look at these precepts.
Let’s look at these tenants and let’s ask ourselves how they these could be beneficial to us.
And I think that could be helpful.
Again, even some of the black folks that have given me feedback and said this has been super helpful.
Just talk to a pastor.
Yes, that said that.
Man, man, brother.
That’s so that’s actually that was kind of this.
57:07
The second part of this was I think, I think that those things are incredibly helpful for that reason.
I know that there are many folks, I’ve been in this situation myself where you’re in predominantly kind of white environment in some of these theological circles and you worry about what some of those litmus test questions might pop up.
57:25
And they’re very, you know, kind of dog whistle questions to figure out where you might be politically or where you might be on this theological issue and waiting for that buzzword to figure out what category to put you in.
And so it does create kind of that double consciousness that WB Dubois used to talk about that in this case, black folks, but I’m sure other folks who are the other feel my my kind of big question at the end here is this or the second part of that is for people of color people, non white folks who have found themselves specifically over the last eight years or so where, you know, some would say that it, you know, folks in some of these kind of white evangelical spaces have been emboldened to say the quiet part out loud with now theological undergirding, if you will, And they don’t feel safe going into those.
58:14
And so there becomes a little bit of that come Hock, ergo Proctor Hock.
Hey, this happens in that circle.
That means the circle itself is the problem.
What do you say or what encouragement can be given to to the folks of color who don’t feel safe any longer in those environments?
58:31
Even if they don’t know for sure, they know, OK, they identify theologically here.
And I know that a large majority of folks who identify there, I think we’ve seen a roughly 87% of people who identify as that group are going to vote a certain way in this election.
And so there are people who associate things with that.
58:47
What would you say?
Not that you’re the the you know, you’re not the compendium of all things white angelicalism, but what would you say to them?
I didn’t know you were going to ask me.
This question sorry, it just seems just now sorry as it was.
Unfolding.
I’m dreading you asking me this question because I think I actually think about it there.
59:04
I think about this question a lot, man.
I really do.
And there’s a there’s a part of me that feels the same way that Derek Bell did by the time he got to the end of his life, which there’s a quote in that.
I don’t remember exactly what it’s what it says, but it’s something to the effect of those of us that work in this space.
59:21
No, we’re not going to ultimately experience justice or righteousness the way we really want to.
And I thought that was a really interesting concession for him to make.
And I think, I think there Bill comes from a Christian background.
He professed Christ, but he was working very in the yeah, very much working in the world.
59:40
And I think his own experience just caused him in some sense, shrug his shoulders and say, this is never going to turn into what we want it to turn into in this world.
And on one hand, that’s very despairing and it’s it’s very cynical.
It’s almost sounds kind of nihilistic, right?
59:55
Like you’re giving up.
On another hand, there’s a part of me that’s almost empowered by that.
Again, I say this as a as a white person who is listening to that testimony and who feels something similar.
But it’s not the same for me as a white person.
It’s not.
And I’m going to say that, but I still know what despair feels like.
1:00:14
I still know what it feels like to live in a broken world where things don’t get worked out the way I want them to get worked out.
What I keep telling myself is I need to spend less time fretting about these people who look and sound like demons, who don’t get it, who have their feet in this topic of race.
1:00:33
Let’s just, we’re just saying right here with race, the people that still don’t get it, refuse to get it, don’t want to get it.
OK, The word, they’re out there.
We’re surrounded by them, but I actually think we’re living in a time where there’s more white Christian people who want to get it than at any time in my life and what I’ve told.
1:00:54
So I’ve sat in meetings, for example, where I’ve been leading something with two black women actually, and we’ll process.
There’s there’s a group of leaders that are almost entirely, I think they’re all white.
OK, what I have in mind, maybe 20 people that are in men and women, but they’re all white.
And we’re talking about race with this group.
1:01:12
And then after we get done with the meeting, we’re processing what happened in the group.
And there’s two people in the group that are stubborn and refused to even have the conversation, right?
They’re kind of on that side of just, they’re angry.
Their feet are dug in and we end up spending all our time talking about those two while the 18 were very engaged.
1:01:31
We’re we’re trying to understand they were asking for more.
They were asking good questions.
They were, they were quiet in some cases because they were reflective.
And I have the same tendency.
We spent all our time talking about those two and how are we going to fix those two or how we, what are we going to do about those two?
1:01:49
And it’s like, let God work on those two.
Let’s 18.
Let’s derive our energy from those 18 that are in that room.
And I think this might be naive man.
I think that’s true in broader culture as well.
1:02:07
I think in the Christian world, I think, I think there’s more white folks that actually want to have this conversation.
They know that their answers are not going to come from hyper progressive politics and they’re resistant to that.
Which also by the way, is is maybe they’re only being given 2 choices when it comes to president.
1:02:25
They don’t want progressive stuck with with our boy right?
There’s nowhere else to go.
I think for me, the people I hang out with, that’s why they’re picking that choice because they know they don’t want to go the hyper progressive route.
1:02:41
On the other hand, my friends that I’m thinking of also know that there’s something that’s not right in the conservative take on race.
They know there’s something not right, they know there’s something missing.
They know they haven’t gotten a good education in this space and they’re just looking for some sane, non hysterical voices that will help them get to a different place.
1:03:01
Those are the people I’m looking for again, I’m not apply, put the shoes on if they can, if they can fit, if not again, because a lot of my black friends are like, I’m not doing that.
I’m not looking for them anymore.
I’m done because I’m just so exhausted.
I’m hurt, I’m betrayed.
And that’s where they’re at.
1:03:18
And I’m not even sure I’m not trying to pick that for them right now.
Right, right.
But under the gospel, where I’m supposed to be representing a different Kingdom, I can’t give up on trying to find those people who want more of that.
And I can’t spend all my time just fretting about these dudes, like I said, who are committed to demonic ideas and are not letting go of them.
1:03:42
I want to spend less time with them, with going after them for the rest of my life, and more with that big group that I think is in the middle, just looking for somebody to lead them to a different place.
Again, maybe I’m naive, maybe it’s not as big as I think it is, but that’s that’s what Be the Bridge is all about.
1:03:57
Like, what are you guys doing?
You’re extracting people that are, if they listen this long, they’re at least not in their head with us a little bit, right?
That’s like, OK, that’s right.
How do we grow?
What do we need to do next to grow?
What can we do?
Yeah, I don’t have to own the whole thing.
But on my watch, in my space, in my corner of the world, how can this look a little bit different?
1:04:17
Because I was here and the way I relate to people that are different with me in the initiations that I take and the way that I use my resources and bring them to the table, people in different ways.
The creative thought I give to building new bridges and not just being satisfied with the status quo.
1:04:33
Come on, that’s grief.
As long as you have to agree.
But at some point we got to get back on that bus together and just keep going until the Lord comes or takes us home.
Like that’s what I feel like got left.
That’s all I’ve got.
That’s all you.
1:04:49
Got that’s a good word.
That’s a good word.
That’s a good word to end on.
Listen, brother.
Doctor Edinski, thank you for sharing.
I know listen, you’ve gone through so many of these interviews, you don’t know what you’re about to walk into half the time.
Who knows how some of these things go.
So I’m so thankful that you kind of brave through this one more, one more time.
1:05:07
Listen, I want our audience to know, man, listen, I’m thankful and I want our audience to know, you know, we all are really good at identifying the Great Commission.
We’re good at identifying the great commandment.
I think the great requirement is something that stands.
It’s one of the biggest verses that it’s part of why I actually went into lard and and we, we know it when the Lord says what he requires of us and we ask, what do you require of us that you love mercy, walk humbly and, and do mercy or do justice.
1:05:34
That’s one of the biggest things.
I think your book does empower folks to do all three.
And so I’m thankful.
I’m thankful that that you’ve kind of given a little bit of a, some, some good launch points and some ways for us to kind of dig deeper into that.
So thank you, thank you, thank you.
1:05:50
I hope we get a chance to to talk again for Be the Bridge, everyone.
I’m Darrell Ford, your guest host.
Thank you so much for joining us today.
And if you got questions, you know where to find us.
And I think that’s all the time we have.
Thanks again.
I appreciate you.
Thank you.
Thanks for listening to the Be the Bridge podcast.
1:06:09
To find out more about Be the Bridge and what we offer, visit bethebridge.com, [email protected]/give Connect with us on social media and remember you are not alone in your pursuit of righteousness and justice.
1:06:25
Latasha Morrison is the executive producer, Sarah Knatzer is the producer and transcripts are done by a wonderful team of volunteers.
Thanks for listening.
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