Theology in the Raw - S8 Ep874: Race, Multiethnic Churches, and Slavery in the Bible: Dr. Dennis Edwards

Episode Date: June 10, 2021

In this invigorating conversation, Dr. Edwards discusses his views on race in the church, the pros and cons of how the church has handled this topic over the last year, and his mixed views on multi-ethnic churches. We then get into a discussion about slavery in the Bible and answer some difficult questions about a difficult topic.  Dr. Edwards has long been inspired with a hunger to understand scripture. Growing up in NYC, Dr. Edwards attended a storefront church whose pastor was an earnest, faithful, and dedicated spiritual leader. After attending seminary, his desire to better understand scripture continued. Dr. Edwards says, “I pursued my PhD largely in an effort to quench my thirst for enlightenment and understanding of God’s Word.” Ordained through the Evangelical Covenant Church, Dr. Edwards has diverse ministry experiences as a church planter and pastor in Brooklyn, Minneapolis, and Washington D.C. Dr. Edwards received a BS in Chemical Engineering from Cornell University, an MDiv (Urban Ministry) from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, an MA and a PhD in Biblical Studies from Catholic University of America. Dr. Edwards currently serves as Associate Professor of New Testament at Northpark Theological Seminary.  https://www.northpark.edu/faculty-staff-directory/dennis-edwards/ Support Preston Support Preston by going to patreon.com Venmo: @Preston-Sprinkle-1 Connect with Preston Twitter | @PrestonSprinkle Instagram | @preston.sprinkle Youtube | Preston Sprinkle Check out his website prestonsprinkle.com If you enjoy the podcast, be sure to leave a review.

Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. I have on the show today my friend Dr. Dennis Edwards. Dr. Edwards is Associate Professor of New Testament at North Park Seminary. He has a BS in Chemical Engineering from Cornell University, an MDiv in Urban Ministry from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, an MA in Biblical Studies from the Catholic University of America, and a PhD in Biblical Studies from Catholic University of America. Dennis has been a church planter, a pastor in many different settings, is a Bible scholar, and as you will see, he's just an incredibly wise, humble, passionate man of God. And I met Dennis a few years ago at a conference that I was speaking at, kind of a small gathering. I met him in passing and I've been following him since then. And Dennis

is just, he's one of the more well-respected Christian scholars in America. Anybody that knows Dennis speaks off the chart so highly of him. I feel like I hear his name everywhere when I talk to people and they're like, hey, do you know Dennis him. I feel like I hear his name everywhere when I talk to people and they're like, hey, do you know Dennis Edwards? I'm like, well, I kind of know him. I'm not sure if he knows me, but I have met him a couple of times. So I was so excited when he said he was willing to come on this podcast. We had a wonderful conversation about race, race relations, slavery in the Bible. That was kind of the main thing I wanted to have him on to talk about. He's written articles on slavery in the Bible. How do we understand slavery in the Bible? And we got there. It took us a while to get there because we talked a lot about just ministry

and the church and race relations and multi-ethnicity in the church and so on and so forth. So I'm very excited for you to listen to this conversation. It was a really, really good one. If you want to support the show, you can go to listen to this conversation. It was a really, really good one. If you want to support the show, you can go to patreon.com forward slash theology in a raw. Support the show for as little as five bucks a month. All of the info is in the show notes. All right, let's get to welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. I'm here with Dr. Dennis Edwards, who I met a few years ago, just kind of in passing. And I feel like after we met Dennis, every other person I meet,

they ask me, do you know Dennis Edwards? I'm like, well, I met him in passing. I don't even know if he knows who I am. But you got a great reputation, brother. So a mentor to many. And I'm super excited to have you on the podcast. Well, thank you.

It's a real pleasure to be talking with you. I mean, your name keeps popping up when I look around and listen. So I'm grateful that I have a good reputation. I hope it stays that way. We'll see after this conversation. Right. Well, why just for people that don't know your name, give us your background. How'd you get into ministry? How'd you get into academics and writing and speaking and all these things? Well, I'll be relatively brief, but I'm getting old, so it's a long story.

And the stories get longer, it seems like, as the years go by. But I grew up in New York City, and when I was a little kid, my father just all of a sudden started taking us to Sunday school. And I still don't know what was behind that. But I say us, my siblings. I had three older brothers and three younger sisters and started going to church around the time, I mean, Sunday school around the time I was 10 or so. But I grew up attending this little storefront church in Queens that has oneness theology,

meaning they believe Jesus only, there's no Father, Son, Holy Ghost, that Trinity is, they would say was a Catholic concept that's not in Holy Ghost. That Trinity is, they would say, was a Catholic concept that's not in the Bible. So for them, you believe in Jesus only, and you get baptized in the name of Jesus, not Father, Son, Holy Ghost. And to know that you are saved, you need to not just be baptized, you also need to speak in tongues, not as a second blessing to show that you have the spirit, but to even be saved. So that sparked me on a journey as a young preteen teenager. And time doesn't allow, I think I need to write a book on it, because I took everything they taught me very seriously and very literally.

But I'm also an introvert. And everybody in church that spoke in tongues had a very extroverted experience, shouting and jumping and flipping over chairs and things like that. And that was never going to be me. And they thought something was wrong with me. I would get people telling me I didn't repit my sins. I didn't get it right. And I wasn't showing the same kind of drama. So I struggled for a long time wondering why God wouldn't save me. And that's a story in and of itself. But by the time I got to college, I started meeting some people from different Christian backgrounds. And I got involved in a campus ministry. I didn't seek them out, but they found me and I started going to a Bible study. And it was around those years

that I started sensing that God had indeed, you know, had a claim on my life, had saved me, as it were. And I felt a call to ministry. I was pursuing a degree in engineering, but I wound up and I got that degree. I wound up teaching school, teaching math and chemistry and physics, but then eventually went off to seminary to Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois. went off to seminary to Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois. And there I was exposed to even more of what American Christianity is like and this whole entity of evangelicalism, which has, well, that's a whole world in and of itself. But I was exposed to it there at Trinity. And I even worked a bit with the Evangelical Free Church, the denomination

behind Trinity Seminary, in my first few years out of seminary. And then that was in New York City. I planted a church called New Community and then moved to Washington, D.C. I served the church on Capitol Hill called Washington Community Fellowship. And after several years there, I planted a church in a different part of D.C. called Southeast D.C., a church called Peace Fellowship, and was there for several years, and then ended my pastoral ministry in Minneapolis at a church called Sanctuary Covenant Church. So I've had four different pastoral experiences, two churches I planted, and along the way I earned a PhD in biblical studies at the Catholic University of America

in Washington, D.C. So I was teaching biblical Greek and Bible courses as an adjunct for many years. Now I'm full-time at North Park Theological Seminary in Chicago. Yeah. And are you the academic dean? Are you the president? I forget, what's your actual title? I would never be either of those things, but I'm associate professor of New Testament. Are you the president? I forget. What's your actual title? I would never be either of those things, but I'm associate professor of New Testament. Oh, I thought you were. Okay. Are you a chair of biblical studies? Yeah, I am the chair of the biblical studies right now, but I shouldn't laugh because it's a serious thing. But I think I got the position because other people were gone at the time.

So, you know, you get voted into things when other people aren't around. Yeah, yeah. And North Park is part of the ECC, the Evangelical Covenant Church, right? It is. And the last few years of my pastoral ministry, as I mentioned, in Minnesota, I was at the Sanctuary Covenant Church. And I had my credential transferred from the Mennonite Church to the ECC, Evangelical Covenant Church. And I found an ecclesial home here. I'm comfortable with the ECC, most part.

And I'm very happy to be at North Park Theological Seminary. Yeah. My good friend Joel Willits is down at the undergrad there. You know Joel? He is, yes. His office is in our building here at Nival Hall. So I see him from time to time. Well, that's when it wasn't a pandemic. I would see him from time to time. Yeah, yes. His office is in our building here at Nival Hall. So I see him from time to time. Well, that's when it wasn't a pandemic. I would see him from time to time. Yeah, yeah.

How have you guys weathered the last year and a half? I mean, what's it been like from an educational standpoint and even just personal standpoint? Well, on the seminary side, I think we flexed very well. I think many of us were used to doing things online, even the synchronous online, like with Zoom or something like that. So I think the college faculty, many of them had a tougher time because not all of them were as used to using online platforms. But at the seminary, we rolled pretty well at first. And then we started having a more hybrid setup. We met in person and some students could log in. So we would have that going on. And my last, just finished up this school year, I had most of my students in person and we did pretty well. Yeah. Okay, good. I see a book behind you,

Might from the Margins. That came out in September. You joked that it was overshadowed by Esau McCauley's book, Reading While Black, which blew up and won awards and everything. I had Esau on the show three weeks before he released the book. I don't think I can get him now. He's too busy, man. Yeah, too busy to return my calls. Tell us the gist of your book. Yes, thank you. The subtitle is The Gospel's Power to Turn the Tables on Injustice. even as I was giving you a quick version of my background, that I've been in these different ecclesial circles, you know, from a very small denomination that I grew up in to being around more, which might say mainstream evangelicalism. And in many of the places I ministered, we said we were trying to be,

and you can fill in the word here that was popular at the time, interracial, cross-cultural, multi-ethnic. All of those words would apply. And I learned over the years that many times when we would say those things, people had different images of what they meant in terms of multi-ethnic ministry. And it often was still the same frame of white supremacist, maybe white-centered Christianity that maybe had a sprinkling of other people in it. And I'll be honest, that frustrated me over time. And I said, you know, when we look at the church broadly, look at the church biblically, we're not seeing this white Eurocentric entity having center stage. So I said, really, when we talk about cross-cultural ministry or however we want to describe it, it's not so much about proximity as it is about power.

You know, who gets to make decisions? To whom are we listening? What theological questions are we asking? So when I wrote the book, I wrote it to say, look, I'm not trying to center white voices and say, this is what you guys need to do to get us. You know, I wasn't saying that. I said, excuse me, how can we, as people have been pushed to the margins, how do we like claim our identity and then show how the way we practice the Christian faith is really the way of Jesus? way we practice the Christian faith is really the way of Jesus. So that's the main idea there, and it's coupled with some of the work I had done in 1 Peter. I did a commentary on 1 Peter, and I started realizing that, you know, here's Christians who are marginalized. They're part of what we could call the diaspora, yet they are told repeatedly in there how they look like Jesus, how they walk the way of Jesus in their marginal

status. So those ideas came together for me in the book. So what I try to do is map out a way that folks who have been marginalized can practice solidarity with each other and demonstrate a better way, or maybe I should say a more robust way, of living the Christian faith. Would you still be a fan of multi-ethnic churches? They just need to be done differently than they've been done in the past? Yeah. Yeah. That's a fair question.

Because, like I said, I didn't come out of one of the traditional black denominations like AME or National Baptist or even Kojic, I was on the fringes. So I never really claimed this identity of being in one of those denominations. So I didn't really have a denomination to go back to that theologically I fit. So I felt kind of nomadic along the way. So I would say, to answer your question more directly, multi-ethnic ministry is still, I think, a noble calling. I just think it's been done in a way that has pushed aside the voices of those who've been on the margins. Right. So. So, yes, I think it should be done differently. In fact, it used to be that we never would expect a pastor to represent their ethnic background that wasn't white.

And if that person did, we still wanted the church to be done in a way that white people were comfortable. I mean, Corey Edwards, and I don't think we're related at all, but she has already written on this, the Elusive Dream, her book Elusive Dream, on how even in multiracial churches with ethnic minority leadership, they still function like white churches because you're only as multiethnic to the extent that white people are comfortable. So let's be I mean, that's the way it works, because if white people feel like, oh, the black people were singing too much of their music, we're doing too much of this, then they'll walk. And then the church doesn't look multi anymore. And I can't tell you how many times I've been in churches that have been trying, and even been pastor of them, trying to negotiate this reality of what does it look like to be multi, because white people seem to be the ones that would be upset. Now, if you do things that are too much like the contemporary Christian music scene, and there are a lot of black folks who are upset with that, they may walk too. But really, the reality of it is a lot depends on the leadership.

So that's a long answer to say, I still believe in multi-ethnic ministry, but you've got to be thoughtful about how you engage these various aspects of communal life. Well, I love what you're saying, because years ago, Derwin Gray and I had this conversation, and he framed it as assimilation versus integration. And it's taken us white people a while to understand that much of evangelicalism has a white culture to it. I like to be really careful with racial phrases. So I would even want to qualify that. But a white dominated church has produced a certain kind of culture, tone, music is a big piece, punctualness, I mean, style, feel and everything, right? everything. And it's taken a while for me and many others to

be self-aware of that. Sometimes it helps going into other ethnically dominated churches and see, wow, this is just a different experience in many different ways. And it produces a certain uncomfortable, or not maybe not uncomfortable. It could be uncomfortable, maybe an unfamiliarity that can be exciting for some people, could be challenging for others. So what you're saying is it's one thing to have a multi-ethnic congregation. It's another thing to have a multi-ethnic leadership, but you're going to step further and saying it's still another thing to have a multi-ethnic tone, feel, nature, vibe. I mean, am I on to something there? Is that kind of that third piece that... You're hitting it. You're hitting it. I mean, there's so many levels to this and a lot of books been getting written on it. And I know Darwin

because I used to teach a bit at a northern seminary before I came to North Park. So I know him. And shortly after he got his D-min, in fact, we've had some conversation. And, you know, there are cynics, I'll be honest, there are cynics who say, well, look, the multi-ethnic church was created for people in mixed marriages, right, in cross-cultural marriages. So it was a place to say, look, if you're not both, you know, both partners are not in the same racial group or whatever, you have this place. But I think there's something beyond that. I think there's something about the witness of what love looks like across, you know, racial barriers or even other constructions in our society, like socioeconomics and all these other things, which has been, I would say, as prominent in my own ministry years as race has been, is to see people from different walks of life in the same space. But in all of these

attempts, right, across economics, across racial division, whatever. The point for me is to say, how are we making decisions and moving together as a community? Because that is really, to me, the essence of church, is how do we function as a community? So what I've seen happen, and I'm not knocking everybody, but what I've seen happen is that there is some person who's got a vision, they try to make it fit what they think it should is that there is some person who's got a vision. They try to make it fit what they think it should be. And then the folks who don't get that, they have to walk. So a lot does depend on this one person having a real comprehensive understanding of race and class and Bible and all kinds of things.

And to the extent they fall short in that, the church is going to be weak. I don't believe in that one person centered way of doing things. So what I'm saying is if we truly are multi, then our leadership is going to have to reflect it. That's going to reflect in the character of how we do things. Yes, worship, the way we eat together, the way we we serve together, all of those things. So I yeah, I kind of have this idealism about what that could look like. But it's more than just who we put up on the stage, which is what I hear. Oh, we just got to make sure it looks diverse up front or we get, you know, multicultural singing group or we have. No, there's something that's got to be deeper in our DNA that says, I love you.

Not just that I'm going to look around and find people that look like you and we can sit near each other. No, I love you. And if I love you, then I'm going to allow myself to be shaped by who you are. That, to me, requires real community. That's really helpful. And it's like you said, just the decision-making power, that's a huge piece too, because you could have a multi-ethnic leadership that has a lot of the power is absorbed by one ethnicity. Not maybe explicitly, it just kind of ends up who planted the church, who had the vision,

who's got the type A personality, who out of maybe ethnic heritage won't voice out an opinion against somebody who's perceived to have the power. And that gets really complicated, you know. It does. I mean, and I don't want to make broad generalizations about different people groups, but the church we started in D.C., Peace Fellowship, I have warm regard for that. The pastor there now, Delonte Goldstein, he's an awesome guy, and I'm glad that we know each other. But I don't have any hands on that ministry. I mean, it was something that I started, and by grace of God, could let others take. But we have people from Latino people, African American folks, and Asian folks, mostly Korean American. And there's something about learning from each other

that I realize doesn't happen always in the big setting. But in our minds, it has to be big. And I know Derwin Gray has managed to get a big-sized ministry that is multi-ethnic, but in a lot of places, the bigness is because of maybe a whole bunch of other things, and we'll find the relationship piece, the discipleship piece, to be maybe a little bit lacking. All of this to say is, I think in those smaller places where community gets formed, that's, to me, that's gold. I mean, that's really where it happens. So yes, it's not just about who we put up front. It's about how those relationships are being developed and allowed to flourish. I was at a church, I mean, this is kind of a, it might be minor, but it does help contribute to culture, I think, where all the worship was in Swahili, Spanish, and English equally, though. So the

first song led with Spanish, and there was English titles on the thing. The next one led with English. The next one led with Swahili. So we're singing in Swahili, but there's English subtitles so you can understand it. And it was like that. Again, that might be, it can't be just that, but I thought that was good and beautiful. It wasn't like we're going to have Spanish subtitles or a token song in Spanish once a month or something. It was very much kind of equal. once a month or something. It was like, it was very much kind of equal, you know, and because that reflected the congregation, the congregation had like maybe 20 nations represented in the congregation. Um, so I don't know, it was really, it was beautiful, man. It was great.

Yeah. Oh, that's awesome. I mean, I certainly don't have the final word on it. I struggled a lot because in my New York experience, I mean, there's people from all over, you know, and we didn't have to have any multicultural potluck. I mean, people just brought what they ate. It was just a potluck. Right. And you find, you know, just this remarkable diversity of food and energy and such. But we were, we did communicate in English. I mean, for the most part. But I have watched other models. And, and there are, there are creative ways to do what you just said. I guess what I'm reluctant to do is prescribe how it should be done. I think what I'm really trying to say is those questions need to be shaped by the community.

You know, I mean, it's like the early church in Acts 6 when the Grecian widows and the Judean widows, they're not getting treated the same. The community's got to come up with a way to solve this problem, right? So you get these wise individuals full of the Holy Spirit who help to mediate this, right? So I'm saying the same thing should be happening in our churches, is that we should say, look, if there's different language groups, how will we do this? And I've been in Mennonite circles where there's simultaneous translation going on throughout the whole service, and songs are being sung into different groups that are present there. But ultimately, I see the power should be vested in the community to discern how no one gets overlooked in terms of power and influence and such. I just had Rich Vlotis on my podcast. He passes a church in Queens, I think, right? With like 70 different nations represented in his church.

Yes. You know, it's funny. The thing about getting old is that I've been able to see some of these wonderful things happen, and I feel like we were ahead of the game. Look, when I started planting the church in New York, it was in 1989. And, and over, you know, I met Dr. Tim Keller, who, who actually, they were already planting a Redeemer uptown, but we had some mutual friends that allowed us to meet. So I'm, I'm at a meeting, and I'm like, this young, I'm 29, you know, and, and watching, you know, these, they're all white guys in the room, but talking about this church Redeemer, and Redeemer had already started, even though they say 89, they had already started in 88, forming and shaping and coming together. I didn't even

know that's the way people planted church. I didn't know anything about planting church. I'll just be honest with you. I came out of seminary with this goal for a multi-ethnic ministry in New York City, and little did I know what all was going on around me. But I guess what I'm trying to say, though, in that is I learned about New Life over in Queens. And at the time, Pete Scazzaro had formed that community. And I was starting to learn more about what was going on in the people who had some insight into church planting and to multi-ethnic ministry. So many times I say, man, I wish I had known back then the stuff I know now. I could have had a more successful 30s decade. Dennis, when you look back at the last year or so of a lot of race conversations, a lot of polarization, I'm not even sure what my question is.

How have you processed last year, specifically how the evangelical church has handled the race conversation as it's been so everywhere? Right, right. Well, I have um responses to that on the one side i'm actually very encouraged that i have seen more white people in my lifetime willing to reckon with uh with the power thing i'm talking about with uh you know white supremacy with the eurocentric nature of christian faith in amer I mean, the stuff that I tried to talk about 30 years ago and got pushed to the side like I'm just an angry guy, I guess I just didn't have the language for it. I didn't have the terms. I mean, we weren't talking about white

fragility or white supremacy in these kinds of terms back then, at least not in the mainstream. So on the one hand, I'm encouraged that I'm seeing more white people who I feel like are seeing what Christianity has done, good and bad. And they're willing to say, look, there's some unhealthy things here that need to be rooted out. It's not really the nature of Christ. On the other hand, I'm surprised at the pushback. Maybe I shouldn't be surprised, but I get like, I don't know, just it catches me sometimes to see how many Christians are so invested in their power and their structures that they can't hear anything that challenges that. And whether it's about women preaching or whether it's about ethnic minorities having influence on the way Christianity operates in America. Even just throwing out the term justice has become like this divisive word.

I'm like, oh, my goodness, how in the world? But I mean, that's not a new thing, but it's just kind of surprising to me how entrenched certain things are at times. And I know I said I shouldn't be surprised, but I am because I feel like progress is getting made. And then I'm like, whoa, really? Maybe I should just stay off social media. But so I guess what I'm saying overall, though, overall, I feel like progress has been made, but I'm a grandfather now. And I say, okay, progress has been made in my lifetime, but not a lot. My my own children still are. You know, they still have their questions about what spaces are safe to enter as a Christian.

You know, like, can I go to that church and feel like I can be affirmed for who I am and in my racial identity that I won't be a suspect or won't be be held at, you know, be looked at, you know, side eye. So I still think we're at that place, at least that place. And but I am encouraged, as I said earlier, that we're having more conversations. I think we're beyond the conversation point, but I will just say that there's more people willing to wade into difficult waters. Yeah, that's good. Yeah, it's been quite the year, man. And one thing, I guess it's discouraging or annoying when I'm seeing some Christians in churches, when I'm seeing some Christians in churches, they're very vocal about critiquing critical race theory, for instance,

and yet they haven't said anything about race, period, up until that. It's like they come out of the woodwork, critique CRT. It's like if you haven't been having a race conversation in a gospel-centered, kingdom kingdom minded way up until now. And then you're just going to come out and critique CRT and then go back to doing your thing. Like to me, that's even, even if, even if your critiques are legit, that just trajectory, I as a white guy, I'm thinking that, that would be probably really annoying and frustrating for somebody of color

to see white churches do that. I don't know. Oh, it is frustrating. And I didn't even go down the CRT route just now and answer your question, but that was in my head. And I just, I find it, I don't know. It's just, there's something really very disingenuous. It's what you just said. I mean, we haven't been talking about race, but so when people are working from a frame where they've thought about things in a deep way, trying to borrow the best of scholarship and grab onto what they can to help solve some problems. And then you're going to get mad and say, well, that's not the way we should go when you've been keeping us out of your spaces. You've been practicing a racialized way of Christianity for so long. And now all of a sudden, but that's not the solution.

For me, I don't really have much patience for that. So that's why even in My From the Margins, I say pretty explicitly that it's a book that's not trying to center white voices. You know, just real quickly, if you remember the movie Black Panther, there's a scene in there where Agent Ross is trying to, with the principal characters from Wakanda, trying to get help from the Jabari tribe. And King T'Challa is incapacitated. I won't say too much, but the movie's been out for a while. People would know.

But at this point, though, when they come to get help from the Jabari tribe, Agent Ross starts speaking for the group. The white guy starts speaking for everybody. And the Jabari start to bark and to bang, you know, the leader, he bangs his staff down and the tribe starts barking and they drown out Agent Ross. I wanted to stand up in the movie theater and cheer because I said, this is where we act because even the white guy who means well, winds up taking this position of power and privilege and just assumes that their voice should be in charge. So I just say, you know, that's the way I've seen Christianity operate. So the folks who are talking, you know, get upset with CRT and all that, I'm saying, you know what?

In my mind, you haven't actually even earned the right to weigh in on this. I mean, we've got too much time and too much energy has been spent for you doing what you know doing your thing and so I'm I'm like I don't I don't even have time to refute that it's not even worth it to me it's like there's too much love that that has to happen there's too much community that needs to be developed there's too many people's lives that are being hurt and and people being alienated and people being being uh disenfranchised there's too much of that work to be done for me to worry about the power guys who get upset whether we talk about race or racism too much

or try to find all the good things about Trump and Trumpism and all. I don't have time for that. I mean, you know what I'm saying? That's just not a fight that I want to fight. I'm curious, based on what you just said about that. First of all that that character i forget what's his name the guy with the tribe um uh um oh my goodness the jabari tribe yeah yeah

he's my favorite he's my favorite character in the movie he's he's i mean obviously the other two main guys are awesome but he's so good um yeah i'm curious if you feel and i'm, and this is a genuine question. I don't even know which, there's no right or wrong answer. I'm just curious because I've heard from some of my other black friends that they feel kind of a similar way with even like white progressives that in a sense might be recognizing the race thing, but they still have kind of a colonial kind of approach. Like I need to be responsible for helping these, my black friends. And it's almost,

I've heard from some people that it's almost isn't dignifying their own agency to think that my white progressive approach needs to kind of like be their savior again. I don't know. Is that. Oh, I hear that and like i said you know now that i'm older i feel like i can say what i want

you know it's like the uncle over in the corner is like okay he gets to speak every now and then and maybe we'll humor him i feel like i'm at that place in my life right now but in all seriousness that critique is is on the money, too. And I do appreciate people have a similar appreciation for the scriptures and for the way of Jesus. And they see that way as a way of justice. And they're ready to raise their voices. But there's also a way that whiteness can, even progressive whiteness can still work to marginalize my voice. It's sort of like, well, you know, it's, I say it's not whitesplaining, but it's the kind of

white mansplaining. And that comes from, even from progressives, like, well, I can do this better. I'll just go. And I'm not saying that people are consciously saying that. But they can posture and position themselves because they are used to being, used to their voices being heard. And they even know the mechanism of how to get into those spaces. Yeah. And so, yeah, I see that happening a lot. And I mean, I'm not, I don't spend my time criticizing everybody because there's a lot to criticize. And I think that happens a lot on

twitter but i do feel like um yes it happens on both sides i think i think there's a cultural way of being that um that uh has embedded in um in our society where white guys feel a certain confidence to just you know do whatever they want to do. And, and that's progressive and, and conservative. What would you want to say to my audience that, and my audience is going to be very sympathetic to everything you're saying and very eager to be self-aware and to do better. Like it's, it's a, I look,

I carved out a pretty cool audience that listens to my podcast. What would you want to say to them? Like it's a, I carved out a pretty cool audience that listens to my podcast. What would you want to say to them? Like the people like, okay, well help me. Like, how can I do better than maybe my, the previous kind of generation

has handled the race conversation? Yeah, yeah. And that is a great question. I get asked it a lot actually. And sometimes I don't want to answer because I think my answer will be critiqued if I don't say it exactly right and all of that. But the reality of it is, you know how they used to

say all politics is local, meaning that's really where policy starts to get shaped. Well, I want to say all Christian community is really local. And in many ways, you know, advance the cause of Christ along with your ethnically minority sisters and brothers, then you find yourself in community with others, and you learn that way. You know, you learn what it means. So in other words, I wouldn't assume, I don't go into relationships assuming the outcome. I have to find the sense of community and belonging. So, and then, you know, use my voice as I can. So I guess I don't want to have a formula and say, hey, look, just do it this way or do it that way. I say, build a community, be part of a community. Now, my friend David Swanson, you know, David, we're in the same denomination, and he talks about re-discipling

the white church. And I say, we were on a panel discussion one time and somebody asked the question about, you know, what do I say to, and I said, you know, I don't say it anymore. I don't try to tell white people what to be. I said, I let David do it. I said, because, you know, in many ways, David has this platform to speak to other white sisters and brothers. And I say, Hey, amen. I'll let him do that because I don't want to. It's it's somewhat trauma is a too strong a word, but it's it provokes something in me. Yeah. When I'm sort of reliving or rehearsing things that I've gone through before, messages I've given, situations I've been in. situations I've been in. So I'm asking white people to be part of community, learn what that means, help be shaped by other voices and people who don't come from your world. And then you'll learn what space you fill and how best to use your gifts. I'm not for silencing anybody, but I'm all for mutuality. Is it? One more question. The main reason why I wanted to

bring you on, man, was to talk about slavery in the bible i want to do just hardcore biblical studies here but um sure is it and yeah i i just ask honest questions man so i just would love to hear your thoughts um is it almost tiring or i don't maybe insulting to be too strong but but to have, I mean, even like me, a white person asking you to help me in the race conversation. Is even that kind of exhausting or is that even a legitimate thing for white people to do? To find their person of color and say, hey, help me to be better. Because you're kind of touching on it a little bit. I am. And I i think and that's actually a great question president i i i find that you know the folks in my age group maybe many of us

have especially in christian circles i mean we've we are kind of tired and um but i can't speak for others but i would say it does get a little exhausting and in some ways frustrating because we've tried to answer that question for 30, 40 years. You know, I mean, I was in my 20s in seminary and having some of the same conversations that I'm hearing today. And so that's that does get a little frustrating. Right. But I know a lot of African-Americans and other folks who want to be in that want to be in a space where they are communicating with white folks and how things could be different. My friend, Oshita Moore, she just wrote a book called Dear White Peacemakers. You know, so there's some folks, African-American folks who want to be in a space where they are helping white people to negotiate these questions. And so I can't make a general rule.

But I would say I hope white people would understand when some of And so I can't make a general rule, but I would say, I hope white people would understand when some of us don't want to engage. I hope they would understand to say, look, I've answered those questions. I've tried to negotiate that. And for a certain self-preservation, I don't want to keep going down that route. Because the more I do that, the more I invite the criticism from the folks who I didn't even think were listening to me. And so in some ways you have to engage that. There's got to be some white person who doesn't like something I said. And rather than saying, oh, I don't agree with Dennis on this, they'll have to come and fix me.

They'll have to come after me to get me. Like, you said this, and how could you mean that? Right. And our world like encourages that kind of thing. You have no relationship with me, but you read something that I wrote and now you're like really angry with me and you got to fix me. Right. I'm not like, I'm not looking for that, you know, but if we have a community, if we're in a, in, in some relationship together and we're talking and you said, Hey Dennis, you said such and such. Really? Do you mean this? And I'm like, oh, OK, that's how you heard it. Let's talk about that.

That's way different. Right. In my view. So I'm I'm OK with community. I'm just so tired of of those other things. But you might be just talking, you know, you're talking to a tired 60 year old man. So on one hand, so I can't speak for all the others, but I would say, you know, I'm even watching like our friend that we mentioned earlier, I see him on social media and even he's had his challenges as popular as he is. He's had some challenges that appears at least on social media with dealing with folks who don't, don't share his viewpoints, you know? And I'm like, man, some of us, we had that, we weren't on social media because it didn't exist, but we had it in our spaces, in our denominational spaces, in academic spaces, and we fought a lot of fights that didn't get public, you know, but they hurt us

nevertheless, right? And so it's my choice now, how much I want to wade into some of these things. So it's my choice now how much I want to wade into some of these things. And hopefully I'm at an age where if I write stuff down and people don't like it, that's okay. I mean, I got disinvited from a church after somebody saw Mike from the margins. And I do go after some aspects of white evangelicalism in there. And I don't know if that's what turned them off, but I got disinvited. And, you know, something like that, I almost forgot about to this moment, but something like that would have bothered me so much in my 30s. Like, that's the group I want to speak to. You know what? Now I'm like, that's all right. Yeah. It's all right.

I've learned there are a lot of parallels between that I recognize as my, as I've, you know, engaged the LGBTQ conversation and come at it from a traditional kind of straight perspective and then just getting to know the complexity and nuance and how it's been mishandled in the past and how a lot of correction and when it triggered, when you said, you know, they try to fix you, you know, and it's like, man, oh, I've talked to so many LGBT people or they felt that way they're like i'm just tired of sharing my story or i'm tired of trying to help straight people get it because we've been doing this for so many years and it's just i just they keep coming back and

wanting to fix me or do you know yeah i don't know i so i i can i can 10 years ago i wouldn't have understood what you're talking about now i'm like oh, oh, I kind of get it. I do get it. I mean, not personally get it, but I understand, definitely understand the idea of just being exhausted. Yeah, I appreciate that. That's actually a thoughtful analysis. Yeah, thank you. All right, let's transition to a biblical studies conversation. The whole idea of slavery in the Bible. You've written an article on slavery

for one of the premier, I mean, biblical studies resources, the dictionary. Is it the Dictionary of Paul? Is that the one you did? The Dictionary of Paul and his letters. Yeah, which is kind of the go-to resource on getting a good overview for different topics. So how should we, I guess my main leading question is,

how should we understand this fact, I think, that the Bible doesn't condemn, seem to condemn slavery? Now, you could say Paul kind of guts it from the inside out. He definitely talks about it in very different ways. But you have the Old Testament that seems to regulate it, not prohibit it. Was slavery, is this a very different kind of slavery than what we experienced in antebellum South? There's various questions that often come up. So I don't know where you want to start. Just help us understand what the Bible says about slavery, and then how do we kind of apply that to today? Well, yeah, and those are great questions. I think that's really the heart

of it. You know, a friend of ours, a mutual friend, I think, Scott McKnight, he's a New Testament scholar. I'm quoting, I'm going to start off with a quote from him right away, because he did a commentary on Philemon, and you used to didn't see many full-length commentaries on Philemon, and he treats the topic of slavery at length in there, ancient slavery as well as contemporary slavery, including slavery in the so-called New World. And he says something that, you know, first caught me, and I realized, you know, I see what he's saying. He says that Paul was blind, this is his words, to the immorality of slavery. Now, he's not saying Paul was blind to slavery. He's saying he was blind to the immorality of slavery. In other words,

he didn't see it as a moral issue. And I thought, wow, you know, I had to sit with that for quite a while to see where he was going with that. But in some sense, that's what's happening with people who are in a world where stuff's going all around them. You know, it's sort of like until we started paying attention to climate change, we didn't think too much about exhaust coming out of the cars. You know, it's sort of like, that's just the world. You got a car, my goodness, you can go from A to B and you can do it faster than walking or faster than your oars.

But we weren't thinking about the exhaust coming out of it. It was just there. And we didn't think about the exhaust necessarily in moral terms. We just thought of it as, oh, wow, that car is blowing out more dark smoke than that car. And then eventually we start to see how it's affecting the environment. And we're still at a place where we're not sure if it's a moral issue. We're still at a place where some say, OK, climate change, maybe climate change is happening, but humans aren't a part of it. So you could say in one sense, there are a lot of Christians that are blind to the immorality of pollution. They

don't see it as a moral issue. So if I could just borrow that kind of thinking, even though the situations are different, borrow that kind of thinking, that's a world that Paul is immersed in. The household is so central to the way that they do stuff, all the way from Aristotle's days. The household is the backbone of society. This is the way it operates. This is just what people are born into. This is just the way that they function. In the household, the paterfamilias is, you know, then you have wife and, I mean, citizen has higher place than people aren't citizen. I mean, it's just the way that the world operated. This is not to excuse it. I'm just saying that's the world he's born into. That's the world that he is negotiating. moral categories to it. We don't see him doing that. Now, I don't see why. I wasn't prepared to say why he wasn't doing it, but the way Scott says it, as he's blind to it, blind to the morality, I guess I can kind of see that, is that it was the way society functioned, but not a moral value assigned to it. I do think, however, that the New Testament does do what you were saying earlier.

It does sow some seeds for building this new community, this new way of being. And in this new way of being, there ought not be slave or free, male, female, right, Jew or Gentile. So there's this new way of being that says family, the new family in Christ transcends or supersedes those societal relationships and boundaries. Yeah, but, you know, New Testament doesn't go as far as we would want it to go in terms of denouncing slavery. I'm not going to pretend that it does. But it's a whole different world.

And it's also not fair to say, I'll just say this one more thing that, well, the difference is because their slavery was different than our slavery. I mean, it's still slave. You still have bodies that are at the disposal of the paterfamilias. Right. You still have. OK, it might not have been skin color based, but you still have people who thought slaves from a certain part of the world were better than slaves from another part of the world. I mean, you still had a sort of ethnic or national hierarchy in terms of slaves. So there were definitely points of resonance, you know, with American, with any slave society. There's this way of power, taking control of other people's bodies. So I'm not going to try to make it sound like it was better. But I will say that there was a way that it was regulated in societies that probably was different depending on that.

I think Aristotle said, if I remember the quote, that a slave is like a lifeless tool or something. Yeah, he did. He called them human tools. So, I mean, yeah, that's pretty, I mean, kind of hard to sanitize. Now, what about the Old Testament and slavery? I mean, even there, wasn't it something like somebody had a debt to pay off, they could become a slave, a servant? Or is that different than what we're even talking about in the New Testament?

Well, I won't pretend to be an expert on the Old Testament as well, but I would say that was behind my comment about regulating, because I do think that the Old Testament, again, it's the culture everybody's swimming in, but they regulate it. I mean, even the whole eye for eye, tooth for tooth is regulating how do I get justice. It's just tooth for tooth. It's not like whole body for tooth.

So there's a certain regulating. So there was a regulating of how you treat the slave and also when people could be freed and all of that. But I'm not as expert on that. So I don't want to say more than I can say. I would say from New Testament slavery, though, we do have, I mean, a lot of people bank on Philemon, right? Bank on this book to say, see, you know, Paul is telling him the free Onesimus. He never says it. He never says free Onesimus. He never comes straight out and say it. And he could have said that.

But he's pushing for something deeper than that, I would even say. That the deeper thing is family. So if Onesimus can be seen as part of the family, this is now going to regulate how Christians relate to one another, regardless of societal boundaries. And as Scott McKnight would even say, I invoke him a lot because I like his commentary, but as he would say, a lot of this, a lot of our imagination should go to how the other slaves in Philemon's household would have heard that letter being read, you know, when he tells them to take back Onesimus, no longer a slave, but as a brother. That does set a tone for family that's different from how society operates.

And I'll say this last piece here, I think it's last, but if society, if the Christian community is a small part of the big society, and it was, it was a very small part of the bigger society, then Paul is probably not even thinking in terms of making general comments about the way society operates, but about how you ought to operate as this Christ community in that broader world. So in that Christ community, there's no, the labels fall off. Yeah, that's true. I mean, if it comes down to a bigger question of the role of church and state, in the first century, like you said, there was no category of some sort of democratic

dressing of injustices in the Roman world. It was rather than try to change the Roman way of doing things, they were to embody a different way, a different polis, right? A different society. Yeah, well said. Embody a different way. Yeah. So in that statement that you said in Philemon, that's unparalleled, right?

Receive your slave back as a brother, as somebody, a co-equal. But even in Ephesians, doesn't he say slaves honor your, or masters honor? Well, Colossians, he definitely says something like, and this would actually be interesting, because if the letter to the Colossians is sent to Philemon's house, because if Philemon's in Colossae, then there's some overlap here. But he tells the masters to treat your slaves with justice or with equity is a word that he uses. I mean, it could be translated equity. So there's this sense of fairness that the masters are supposed to have toward their slaves. Now, the household codes in and of themselves are problematic.

I mean, I'll be straight with you. Because, you know, the fact that he even addresses these segments of society and he doesn't necessarily lift up the one that's on the bottom, although he challenges the ones that are on the top, husband, master, parent. But, yeah, the masters are challenged. They say, look, you've got a master in heaven. You need to treat your slaves justly. The two that I get really hung up on is, yeah, the vice versa.

Slaves, obey your masters as unto the Lord, knowing that a lot of slaves are treated as sex objects. They were obviously mistreated just physically, let alone verbally and everything, to say, obey your masters. I get the theological point, kind of, but I cannot read that. And just like, I don't know, it just does not sit right. And also in 1 Corinthians 7, when Paul says, if you're a slave, don't seek to be released, remain as you are. 1 Corinthians 7, when Paul says, if you're a slave, don't seek to be released, remain as you are. And again, I understand the context in which you said that.

It's more nuanced and complicated, but still, I just read that. But I read the book of Joshua, and it doesn't sit right with me. Well, you're right. There's a lot of points of tension, no question. The 1 Corinthians 7 passage, that one is convoluted, admittedly. Esau, Macaulay treats that one in reading while black, the 1 Corinthians 7, because it's difficult. Some people think Paul is saying straight out, get out if you can get out. Others think the translation is stay in, you know. So that's a tough one. But coming back to the household codes, yeah, I mean a certain amount of um of of keeping yourself safe

that's going on i mean peter does this in first peter he says look you might be suffering unjustly he uses that word unjustly in chapter two but he still tells the slaves to um to to stay in there in this situation and in some ways i liken that to like driving while black. You know, you keep your hands on the wheel and you don't reach for the glove compartment, not because you think this is right, because society's messed up, but you see it as a way of perhaps preserving your life.

And you say, in light of this unjust, messed up society, what can help me stay alive? And in some ways, that's what Peter seems to be doing. And maybe, maybe Paul as well is in a sense to say, look, you Christians are a small part of the society. You do what you need to do to keep yourself safe. And part of that is to conform to some, and I put the stress on some, aspects of the broader society. But I say that with a little hesitancy because I don't want to say that injustice is being sanctioned. What I want to say, though, is that we can find ways to negotiate within an unjust society, even if we can't immediately change those laws.

No, that's helpful. I mean, I'm thinking like missionaries I've talked to in like some majority world places like Papua New Guinea and others where they're like, the level of misogyny and low view of women is so profound that if they, you know, if they're at a, they need to be at Z. We see it as a win if they're getting to, you know, D E F, which is still far, far from where they need to be. But that's, those are huge steps. It may take 20 years for a man to get from a to, to, you know, G.

And that's, it can't change overnight you know it's hard it's it is a hard tension because yeah you see injustice you're like it needs to end now and we're gonna not stop until it ends now but it might take decades yes well that that's that's that's actually a good example i think at least in my mind that's a good example, I think, at least in my mind, that's a good example. And we always, of course, in hindsight, you know, we're looking with very enlightened eyes and we want everything to change very quickly. And of course, it's the Bible, for goodness sake. We want the Bible to be speaking, you know, as progressively on things as we would. But what you just said is, that's a good example. Progression is good.

I mean, we see that. I wrote a book on nonviolence and obviously had to deal extensively with the Old Testament. But that's kind of where it was a slow progression. God met Israel where they were at in their society. He improved upon it. I mean, you compare the laws with Hammurabi and others. It's like, man, well, this is not where we would want it to be, but it's better than where the culture was. But then throughout the Old Testament, you see this kind of progression towards a more

humanizing ethic, like in the Sermon on the Mount. Yeah, it's complicated. It is, but that's another good example. I think that violence, I think that's a good example. Yeah. One more question, man. I'll let you go. I know you're a busy man. I don't mind chatting with you. My answers are kind of long. Sorry. No, you're fine. You're fine. I've got to wrap it up here in a few minutes. Church history. I remember reading Rodney Stark wrote an article on slavery in the church. wrote an article on slavery in the church. And he said it wasn't like the whole church was pro-slavery until the abolitionists came along.

There was some diversity within the church, especially among leaders who had sometimes pretty critical views of slavery. He just said, if I remember correctly, he said something like, the church just didn't listen. Is the church's relationship to slavery more complicated or was it pretty, in your knowledge, pro-slavery? Well, I'm not a historian, so I make the disclaimer, but I'm also familiar with some of that that you just discussed. of that that you just discussed. You know, I mean, I even came across a quote from Jonathan Edwards' son, Jonathan Edwards, who commented on Philemon and Onesimus. He was definitely not pro-slavery, even though his father famously was. So I would say that, you know, I don't know, it's a complicated answer, but to me, it's always about power, though.

I think the church doesn't listen to marginal voices when the power people are doing well. So, yes, the church was not of one mind, and people came at it different places. When the abolitionists came along, the Quakers, the Mennonites. I mean, they might have had a condescending view toward Black people too, but they didn't think slavery was right. So people came at it different times, different ways. But I would say, yeah, the folks who failed to get there, I think, would be holding by power. I mean, I can't think of, it's hard for me to see it any other way, honestly. I mean, to dehumanize folks. I mean, if you're not doing well in society, maybe you'll stop to reassess. But if you're doing well – Yeah, no, I get it.

I'm curious. Do you know BJ Thompson? We had this conversation. He's down in Atlanta. Oh, no, BJ. No, I don't know. Okay, okay. Yeah, so we were talking about how we were taught in seminary and church history.

And he was like, man, you got Jonathan Edwards and all these heroes of the faith. And we're like, I'm in seminary. And they don't even mention the fact that these dudes were only slaves. And I don't want to put words in his mouth, but almost like, why are we even reading these guys? And I said, well, I don't know. What about we know Martin Luther King was not the most faithful to his wife, and he was, I think, pretty misogynistic.

Does that mean because he's got blatant kind of faults that we write off everything he did? I'm not even sure where we end up landing on that, but I would love your perspective on how do we think through some of these, you know, blind spot would be an understatement. These, you know, Christians who just had profound blind spots in terms of how they viewed slavery. Like, can you read Jonathan Edwards anymore? I don't know if he did before. So you got to dump that on me at the end of this conversation. You know, OK, I think of it for myself. I think of in terms of, you know, what shapes people's worldview, what shapes their you know, how do they look at humanity and such?

Because because of the pull of the pull of Dr. King example. okay, yes, he's in a patriarchal world. But, you know, I think if he were here to talk about his relationship, I don't think, or his extra matter relationship, I don't think he would make those sound like they were good. You know, I don't think he would try to make them holy. But I do think some of the people back that we were talking about Jonathan Edwards and such, I don't think they would even have considered owning slaves to be immoral. You know what I mean? So, so I guess what I'm trying to say is there's, if, if, if their whole, if their way of being was to dehumanize a group of people, I really have a hard time with accepting the whole theology. right? But then again, I'm

not a Calvinist. I'm not all that excited to read Jonathan Edwards anyway. But I'm making a joke on that regard. But I guess what I'm trying to say is I want people to be whole. I want to allow for people, of course, to make mistakes and be short short sighted on things. But there's something that's fundamental at a level of disregarding women or disregarding people of color, you know, just dehumanizing and using people is different for me than somebody who, who messed up in their marriage or didn't pay their taxes or somehow, you know what I mean? There's something that in my mind, I make a different, there's a differentiation, I guess. It's not like Jonathan Edwards, you know what I mean? There's something that in my mind, I make a different, there's a differentiation, I guess. It's not like Jonathan Edwards, you know, struggled with slave owning tendencies

or something like that. Yeah, in all modern vernacular, you're right. No, that's actually, that's really, really helpful. So maybe King's, you know, and I don't, I've read a couple of biographies, so I don't have any quotes on it, but I've heard many people say

he was clearly very misogynistic and how he treated women. But you're saying that that would do that. So that would be more similar to maybe Jonathan Edwards or swimming in a cultural environment where maybe, I don't know. And not to, again, not to excuse it, but. Well, I guess I don't want to excuse anybody basically. I guess what I'm trying to say is I, think uh i yeah i don't know i don't know enough about them but i would say i guess i didn't think of um i mean i thought of dr king's

environment but i guess what i'm saying is i i didn't i wouldn't hear him thinking what he did was something that he would do out in the open okay oh yeah yeah yeah no that's good you know what i mean and whereas i think jonathan ever was was owning slaves out in the open because he didn't think it was bad. Right. Which is insane for a guy who studied the Bible 12 hours a day. Right. Man, well, I'm going to let you go, Dennis.

I could talk to you for hours, man. Wish we could do ministry together somehow, but you're way out there in cold Chicagoland. Not close today. Yeah. I hang out with ECC folks quite a bit bit so i'm sure a pass will cross sometime yeah in the flesh so yeah i appreciate you brother for the conversation man i appreciate it yeah thanks for having us thanks for coming on the show Thank you.