Theology in the Raw - S9 Ep945: A Native American Perspective on Christian Nationalism: Mark Charles

Episode Date: February 10, 2022

In this podcast, Mark gives a different perspective about the “discovery” of America and some of the profound problems when Christians go to be with the Empire. Mark Charles is a speaker, writer, and consultant. The son of an American woman (of Dutch heritage) and a Navajo man, Mark teaches the complexities of American history regarding race, culture, and Christendom in order to help forge a path of healing and conciliation for the nation. He is the co-author of the book, Unsettling Truths: The Ongoing, Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery, and he authors the blog Reflections from the Hogan. Mark is currently an independent candidate for the presidency of the United States, advocating for a Truth and Conciliation Commission – a formal and national dialogue on issues of race, gender, and class. https://wirelesshogan.com Theology in the Raw Conference - Exiles in Babylon At the Theology in the Raw conference, we will be challenged to think like exiles about race, sexuality, gender, critical race theory, hell, transgender identities, climate change, creation care, American politics, and what it means to love your democratic or republican neighbor as yourself. Different views will be presented. No question is off limits. No political party will be praised. Everyone will be challenged to think. And Jesus will be upheld as supreme. 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 Dr. Sprinkle’s website prestonsprinkle.com Stay Up to Date with the Podcast Twitter | @RawTheology Instagram | @TheologyintheRaw If you enjoy the podcast, be sure to leave a review.

All right, friends, this is one of those enter at your own risk podcast. I have on the show today the one and only Mark Charles. Mark is a speaker, writer, consultant. He's the son of an American woman and a Navajo man, and he teaches about the complexities of American history regarding race, culture, and Christendom in order to help forge a path of healing and conciliation for the nation. He is the co-author of Unsettling Truths, the Ongoing Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery. Did you know, did you know that Columbus didn't discover America? I didn't know that. I thought in 1492, he sailed the ocean blue and discovered America, but Mark reminded me in this podcast that you can't discover a land that was already inhabited. Boom!

That's where we're going to go for this podcast. So some of you will love it. Most of you, I think, will be challenged by it. And some of you might hate it. And that's just how it goes on Theology and Wrong. I had a wonderful time talking to Mark. The dude's super smart and challenges well-established narratives. So I enjoyed this conversation. I hope you will too. And you definitely want to check out Mark's book, Unsettling Truths, and also his website, wirelesshogan.com. All the info is in the show notes. So please welcome to the show, for the first time, the'm here with Mark Charles. Mark, thanks so much for being on Theology in the Raw.

Why don't I just throw out my first major question? My history is a little fuzzy. And can you remind me when Christopher Columbus discovered America? I'm blanking on the year. Well, before I get to that question, please let me follow some protocol here and introduce myself. Okay. So, in our Navajo culture when we introduce ourselves

we always give our four clans we're matrilineal as a people and our identities come from our mother's mother my mother's mother is American of Dutch heritage and that's why I say loosely translated that means I'm from the wooden shoe people

my second clan, my father's mother, is Toa Higlini, which is the waters that flow together. My third clan, my mother's father, is also Tsinbake Dina'a. And my fourth clan, my father's father, is Toa Tchitni. That's the Bitterwater clan. It's one of the original clans of our Navajo people. I also want to acknowledge that I'm speaking to you today from what's now known as Washington, D.C. My family and I moved here from the Navajo Nation about six and a half years ago. And Washington, D.C. is the traditional land of the Piscataway. So the Piscataway,

they're the nation that they were living here, hunting here, farming here, fishing here, raising their families here and burying their dead here long before Columbus got lost at sea. And they're still here. I've had the honor of meeting some of the Piscataway. I've been present at a land acknowledgement and welcoming by the Piscataway. So I want to honor the Piscataway as the host people of the land where I live. And I want to just publicly thank them for their stewardship of these lands and just state how humbled I am to be living on these lands today.

Wow. Now, regarding your history question, in my book, which is On Selling Truths, The Ongoing Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery, the first sentence of the first paragraph comes from a story of when I was down at a ceremony happening at the Columbus statue right near Union Station just alongside the Capitol building. And it says, you cannot discover lands that are already inhabited. You can conquer those lands. You can steal those lands. You can even colonize them. But you can't those lands, you can steal those lands, you can even colonize them, but you can't discover them, right? When I'm out speaking to audiences kind of pre-pandemic,

and I'm in a large auditorium with a lot of people, to hit that point home, I tell them, I said, leave your cell phones, your laptops, your car keys out in front of you, and I'll come by and discover them. Clearly this is not discovery. And so the only way that you can say Christopher Columbus discovered America is if you dehumanize the people who are already here. So when you have a continent that has at minimum 6 million people, maybe even 15 to 20 million people already inhabiting these lands, you cannot claim to have discovered it. And so the fact that we refer to Christopher Columbus as the discoverer of America, it reveals the implicit racial bias of the nation, which is that native peoples, people of color, aren't fully human. Now, this notion of discovery comes from what's known as the doctrine of discovery. So the doctrine of discovery, it's a series of papal bulls, edicts of the Catholic Church. They were written between 1452 and 1493. They say things like invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens and pagans whatsoever. Reduce their persons to perpetual slavery.

Convert them to his and to their use and profit. It's essentially, the Doctrine of Discovery is the church in Europe. a church in Europe saying to the nations of Europe, wherever you go, whatever land you find not ruled by white European Christian rulers, those people are subhuman and their land is yours for the taking. So this is the doctrine that allowed Europeans to go into Africa, colonize the continent, and enslave the people because they didn't see them as human. It's the same doctrine that led Columbus, who was literally lost at sea, he had no clue where he was. And then he landed on this new world and he claimed to have discovered it. You can't discover land already inhabited. So even the misnomer, the reference we use to

what he did and who he was is absolutely incorrect. Wow. Do you still see that language? I mean, pervasive? Oh, everywhere. Columbus, discovery in America. Yeah, it's taught in our history books. It's a part of the American psyche. Yeah, yeah. And this is the challenge with the doctrine of discovery because not only is it this heretical doctrine that kind of forms the imagination of what it means to be an American, but it's become deeply embedded into our foundations.

So our Declaration of Independence, which starts and states that we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal. Well, if you keep reading this declaration 30 lines later it refers to natives as merciless indian savages oh wow making it very clear the only reason the founding fathers use that inclusive term all men because they had a very narrow definition of who is actually human the constitution is the same way it starts with an inclusive term we the people of the united states article 1 section 2 the section of the constitution that determines who is and who is not a part of the union who is and who is not covered by this constitution if you read article 1 section 2 you have to know it never

mentions women that's important because if you read the entire document preamble through the 27th amendment you will find there are 51 gender-specific male pronouns. 51 he, him, and his, who can run for office, who can hold office, even who's protected by the document. There's not a single female pronoun in the entire Constitution. People say, well, that's how they talked back then. Yeah, they did. You know why? They were sexist. Absolutely sexist. That's why they didn't include women. And so. So first of all, Article 1, Section 2 never mentions women.

Second, it specifically excludes natives. And third, it counts Africans as three fifths of a person. Right. In 1787, that literally leaves white men. And technically, it was white landowning men who could vote. Wow. Then in 1823, we have a Supreme Court case. Johnson versus McIntosh. This is two men of European descent. They're litigating over a single piece of land. One of them acquired the land from a native tribe. The other one said they got the same piece of land from the government and they want to know

who owned it, who had the right to sell the land, the native nation or the U.S. government. This case goes all the way to the Supreme Court. This is the John Marshall Court, 1823. So they have to determine the principle of land titles. They rule that discovery is what gives title to the land. OK. And then they reference this doctrine of discovery. They literally refer to natives as savages and say that even though we were here first,

but because we're not fully human, we are mere occupants of this land. While Europeans are the discoverers of the land and therefore they have the fee title to it. So they are the true title holders that case creates the legal precedent for land titles now that precedent and the doctrine of discovery are referenced by the supreme court in 1954 1985 and most recently in 2005 i actually gave a tedx talk about three and a half years ago, almost three or four years ago, 2018. So that's almost four years ago now. And in that TEDx talk, I go into depth, it's called We the People, the three most misunderstood words in US history. I go into

depth into that 2005 Supreme Court case. It's probably one of the most white supremacist Supreme Court opinions written in my lifetime. Essentially, it calls nativists savages, references the Doctrine of Discovery by name, says we do not have sovereignty over our lands. And that opinion was written and delivered by Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Now, many people are challenged by that because, right, she was the voice of dissent in a very conservative Supreme Court. She was fighting on behalf of those on the margins, and she was. The problem is, is when your land titles are based on the legal understanding that natives are savages, this makes white supremacy a bipartisan value. And so this is the challenge we face as a nation is this doctrine of discovery

has literally been embedded into the foundations of our nation. And it's used by our courts today And it's used by our courts today to prop up land titles. Wow. Goodness, Mark, we can close in prayer now and we'd have enough to chew on. Can we go back to 1492 when Columbus was lost at sea, landed on the lands of your ancestry. Can you just do us a quick kind of history? It doesn't need to be quick, actually, but like a history lesson. What did that bring to this land that we now occupy? And what happened in the wake of that, the landing of Columbus in America?

And this is a genuine question. I'm not really acquainted. I'm not a historian, and I know really little other than what I learned in high school, which wasn't much about the last really, I mean, about American history. Like I'm not up to speed on American history like I probably should be. Can you just walk us through? I'm not up to speed on American history like I probably should be. Can you just walk us through?

Maybe walk us through a narrative that might be really unfamiliar to those of us who grew up in America and learned about the discovery of – I'm using fake quote mark here – the discovery of America. Well, literally, I mean, that's what happened. They claimed to have discovered it. And that brought in this sense of superiority. It brought in a sense of this was their land. death of native peoples by disease, but ultimately of ethnic cleansing and genocide in the intentional removing of natives from these lands so that this nation could establish its manifest destiny and eventually rule this continent from sea to shining sea. This is the thing that most people are not aware of, is how intentionally Europeans and later Americans, bolstered by the theology coming from the Christian church, justified genocide against native peoples. I mean, a great example of this is in 1630, right, John Winthrop. He's in what's now known as the Boston Harbor. He's with a group of colonists

here to plant the Boston colony. And on board that ship, he preaches a sermon titled A Model of Christian Charity. In this sermon, he refers to the colonists that he's with as a city upon a hill, right? This is language used by our politicians all the time. It comes from the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus is referring, is telling his disciples, his followers, to be a lamp on the city on the hill, shining their light into this dark world. He goes on to exhort them as any Protestant Christian would exhort their congregants. And at the end of his sermon, to convince them to heed his exhortations, he quotes from Deuteronomy chapter 30. Now, Deuteronomy 30 is the passage in the Old Testament where the people of Israel are standing on the banks of the Jordan River, ready to cross over and take possession of their promised lands. And God's reiterating the threats and promises of the land covenant. If you obey me,

I'll do these things for you. If you disobey me, I'll do these things to you. I don't remember the exact quote, but in that quote, essentially, John Winthrop quotes and says, you know, we're standing on the banks of this vast sea, ready to take possession of our promised lands. This is, I mean, this is what he's quoting from Deuteronomy chapter 30. However, Deuteronomy doesn't say vast sea. Deuteronomy says river. However, Deuteronomy doesn't say vast sea. Deuteronomy says river. And because they were standing on the shores of the Jordan River. He changes it to vast sea.

Why? Because they didn't cross a river, they crossed an ocean. And so he's basically telling the people he's with that we are God's chosen people, and this is our promised land, and we're ready to go and take possession of it. That mentality of promised lands and this notion of white Europeans have a God-given right to rule this land from sea to shining sea, that's what feeds into this notion of manifest destiny. Now, understanding manifest destiny, right, this is the history of the 19th century. If you look at the history of the 19th century from, you know, 1801 to 1899, in that history, in that period, that century the the majority population explodes from about 5 million people to about 76.2 million people and the native population collapses from

it already is down from 6 million to about 600 000 and then collapse even further down to about 237,000. During that century, as our nation is completing its manifest destiny, they fight endless wars against Native nations, and our U.S. Congress actually awards 425 Medals of Honor to U.S. soldiers who participated in the Indian War campaigns. 20 of those medals were awarded in 1890 for the massacre at Wounded Knee.

So we are literally awarding medals of honor to soldiers committing massacres and genocide against Native peoples as they're ethnically cleansing this land to make place for manifest destiny. Now, the biggest challenge about this history, and in my book that I co-authored with Professor Seung Chan Ra, a good friend of mine, we go into this history in depth. The two hardest chapters we repeatedly hear back from people to read are chapters 9 and 10. Chapters 9 and 10 begin to deconstruct the mythological legacy

of our greatest president, Abraham Lincoln. When you think about history, when you think about history, history is written by the victors, right? The victors write the history. Now, the biggest challenge America faces is we've never lost a war that matters, right? Every major military conflict we've been involved in since the founding of this country, the United States of America has won, Meaning we've been able to control the narrative and write our own history for our entire existence. So imagine, if you will, for a moment, if Nazi Germany won World War II, right? How would their history books record the legacy of Adolf Hitler? He'd be their greatest leader ever. How would their history books record the Holocaust? Well, we have Holocaust deniers today. Imagine if they won the war,

right? What Holocaust? There was no Holocaust. This is the exact same thing that we did. And so when you look at Abraham Lincoln in 1862, two years into his young presidency, Abraham Lincoln signed two bills. He signed the Pacific Railway Act and he signed the Homestead Act. The Pacific Railway Act allocated the land and the resources to complete the Transcontinental Railway. And the Homestead Act allocated 160 acres to any American family willing to go west and homestead for six years. from Minnesota, after the Sand Creek Massacre and the removal of the Cheyenne and Arapaho from the state of Colorado, after the Bear River Massacre and the removal of the Shoshone from Utah and Idaho, and after the long walk and the removal of the Navajo and the Mescalero Apache from

the territories of Arizona and New Mexico, Abraham Lincoln had literally ethnically cleansed the three primary routes, northern, central, and southern, for the Transcontinental Railway, making him one of the most genocidal presidents in our nation's history. Wow. the most genocidal presidents in our nation's history. And if you read, right, because he's also the president who brought Thanksgiving into the modern era, right? Before it was kind of a state holiday or a local celebration. And he really used it and referenced it with his Thanksgiving Day proclamation in 1864 to bring it into the modern era.

Now, if you read his Thanksgiving Day Proclamation, and you lay it over the history of our nation in the 18 months prior to that proclamation, that proclamation. He is literally calling on the nation to hold a day of Thanksgiving to celebrate the fruits of the genocide he had been actively committing. Mark, I knew nothing about any of this. So the whole idea of Thanksgiving being this kind of coming together of European and native peoples. Is that just completely myth? Did that come from somewhere? Did that ever happen? It's a complete myth.

Was it to cover up the genocide? Was it to like whitewash the history? Or why? Where did that? In my book, after we lay out this, we deconstruct the mythology of Abraham Lincoln. I talk about trauma, right? And we have a chapter and a half on trauma. Now, you obviously can look at the PTSD, the post-traumatic stress that is affecting people of color, right?

You also can see the complex PTSD, which is the PTSD that gets passed down generation to generation on communities after things like Jim Crow, our boarding schools, our enslavement, our Indian massacres, our removal. You can even see the historical trauma. Now, historical trauma is not an individual diagnosis. This is actually how psychologists understand the dissatisfaction in a broader community. So you can see that in African-American communities after our nation's history with enslavement and Jim Crow and segregation. You can see in Native

communities after our nation's history with boarding schools and Indian massacres. You can see in Jewish communities after the Holocaust. I refer to historical trauma as the multi-generational and communal manifestation of a complex PTSD. So if you have PTSD at an individual level, you have historical trauma at a larger communal level and multi-generational level. Now, the fascinating piece about this is as I've been lecturing and traveling the country for the past decade, talking about the doctrine of discovery, after a few years, I begin to notice the repeated responses of my white audiences. And they would come up and some people would actually be so triggered by what I was saying that in the middle of a lecture, they would stand up and call me a liar.

Right. Literally, in the middle of lecture, they would stand up and call me a liar. And I actually estimated it was about one half of one percent of my white audience would call me a liar. So it didn't happen every single time, but it happened regularly and I noticed the majority of the time Almost a hundred percent of the time the people who were calling me liars were white Christian male Military our law enforcement, okay people Right. Yeah, so these are people white Christian male

Either military or law enforcement who have signed up to essentially in the name of defending and advocating for this nation they have been given in certain circumstances the right to kill on behalf of this nation right and most of them did this without any sort of moral challenge. Right. The United States is the good guys. We're fighting the bad guys. And this is on a not only on a moral level, but on a spiritual level. This is God. This is a Christian nation, blah, blah, blah. And so they did that without any moral conflict. did that without any moral conflict. In my lectures, when I laid out how not only was the history of our nation genocidal and ethnic cleansing and dehumanizing, but it was colonial

and it was based on a heresy of Christian theology. This caused a reaction in people who were listening. It would trigger them psychologically. So that they had to either deal with the moral implication of what they've been doing or label me a liar. And in the moment, it was easier to label me a liar. So they would, one half of 1% of the audience would stand up and call me a liar. And in the moment, it was easier to label me a liar. So they would one half of 1% of the audience would stand up and call me a liar. And I began to talk with some people I've worked with in the psych field in the past. And I said, I feel like I'm observing trauma in white people, but I don't have a placeholder for it, right? It's not a PTSD. It's not a complex PTSD. It's is Rachel McNair.

And her book is titled PITS. PITS stands for Perpetration Induced Traumatic Stress. She actually refers to PITS as the psychology of killing. And she identifies it presents itself like PTSD in almost every way, shape, and form, except if PTSD afflicts the victims of a horrifying event, pits would afflict the perpetrator, the person who caused it. So once I had her research, I could now hypothesize that if PTSD has a multi-generational communal manifestation that has a debilitating effect on the marginalized, the victims of this history, it would also then make sense that pits might also have a multi-generational communal manifestation that is what I was seeing manifest itself in the perpetrators and the people standing on and even benefiting from this history.

Yeah. And so in my book, I lay out what I refer to as the trauma of white America. And over the past seven years, I've developed a method of interacting with white Americans, not first and foremost as racist or even as fragile, which are the two categories white people most often get put into. But I interact with white Americans as another group of traumatized people. Now, I have to be very clear, they're not victims of trauma. This is a multi-generational community manifestation of a perpetration-induced traumatic stress. They're doing this because of what they're standing on. So they're not victims, but they still manifest symptoms of trauma. And I found if I treat them, if I treat white people as another group of traumatized people, I actually am much more successful in keeping them from derailing the

work and the work I'm trying to do in the conversations I'm trying to start. So it's what you're referring to is, I mean, might be described, you know, when somebody has a, when their life is built on a certain narrative, and then that narrative is challenged, might be described, you know, when somebody has a, when their life is built on a certain narrative and then that narrative is challenged, it's just, it's destabilizing. Like the whole, the whole structure is rattled. Is that kind of another way of framing what you're saying? Absolutely. This is why white evangelicals are terrified with critical race theory, right? So critical race theory has several tenets. Two of the primary ones,

two of the primary tenets of critical race theory is, A, racism and white supremacy are systemic. Now, the challenge with that is Western culture is hyper-individualistic. Western culture is hyper individualistic. Yeah. And so this is one way that white America uses to justify itself, right? Because in America, you can say, I'm not racist.

I don't feel any ill feelings towards people of color. I don't do anything to mistreat them. And I tell them, you don't have to. You've created a system that does that racism and white supremacy for you. And so when white evangelicals hear that racism is not individualistic primarily, but it's also systemic, that's terrifying because it takes away part of the justification. The other piece of critical race theory that terrifies most white evangelicals is that it lifts up, it centers the voices of the marginalized. So when history is written by the victors, and American history is taught from the perspective of white America, even white Christian America, right? And you have this

carefully constructed myth that Abraham Lincoln was the greatest president, we're God's chosen people, this is our promised land, therefore our genocide is justified right and you have that very very carefully constructed myth and you start interjecting and centering the voices of the people who were oppressed and marginalized by that history that's terrifying because that story is going to be entirely different yeah well i don't understand this is i i view white America's response to critical race theory as evidence of the trauma of white America. I don't want to cut you off. I've got so many questions. So I would say there are many very – white responses to critical race theory are fairly diverse i think what you're saying

does definitely capture one strand of that i think there's other nuances um in there a lot of it comes with them not even understanding what critical race theory yeah i think there's a a politically right wing framing of critical race theory yeah i think there's a a politically right wing framing of critical race theory they're kind of using the phrase critical race theory to describe approaches to racism they don't like and then they're slapping crt on it when it's like that's not really cr like i mean i've read critical race theorists and it's like did they agree or disagree it's kind of like talking about something that's oftentimes seems quite different again again and that that's where it becomes a tool yeah right because even if you don't understand or you wouldn't have been able to identify what i say you can easily about the

trauma of white america if you understand that saying certain things will trigger a response yeah right so when someone is traumatized, there's a disconnect between their reality and their psyche. Right. Right? And so usually the people around them know they're traumatized before they do. Yeah.

And so if you go, and so, and so they, because they see their responses, they observe it. And so one of the, one of the symptoms that you have that, you know, you're traumatized is, I mean, shock and denial is some of the first symptoms

of trauma, but you can't live in a state of shock and denial because eventually that stuff's going to bubble out and it's going to come through your triggers. Right. And so the media, politicians, others have learned how Donald Trump learned this very effectively, how to trigger white people to get them to react in his favor. And so, again, when you're triggered, right, when you're in a state of shock denial, you're traumatized and you get triggered, your adrenaline starts to flow. You get this bitter taste in your mouth, right? You're in a fight or flight mode. You're not able to reason and even make complex decisions in that moment. You are in a fight or flight mode.

And so this is what happens when you see these screaming matches going on. You have triggered people screaming at each other, and no one's able to listen or reason or have a reasonable dialogue because they're both in the state of being triggered. And so this is where, again, by understanding, so the challenge is, is if you see white people primarily as racist or as fragile that will dictate your response if you have a screaming white person and you see them as racist they're a threat if you have a screaming white person you see them as fragile you have to soothe it over yeah yeah when I see a screaming white person I don't see them first and

foremost as racist or as fragile. I see them as traumatized. So what I do is I allow them to have their episode. I let them get it out. I keep myself safe and I make sure that they're safe. And then I will come back to them and reemphasize my point and say, now we have to talk about it. Maybe that's even not in that interaction. Maybe I have to let it go for another day. But I don't engage it while they're in that triggered space. Well, I don't understand, Mark. I mean, it just seems like when Christians have that reaction that you're describing that just seems like a, at least one of the roots is really a misplaced identity that's so wrapped up in their supposed nationalistic identity. You know, like when you describe, because I see myself as an exile, I'm a Christian, I live in an exile. I

didn't choose to be born here. I happened to be born here. I didn't tell my parents to have sex and give birth to me. Like, you know, I just, I'm a passive recipient of this land that I live in. And because I live in a different kingdom, like, my identity is so elsewhere that whatever the history of this land that I happened to be born in is almost, like, it doesn't, like, when you described Abraham Lincoln, I'm like, all right, he could have been a child molester for all – no, like I don't – that doesn't – that does nothing for my identity that some Babylonian leader that I've been exiled into. And I could even believe that the current state of America has a very dark history, which it does. And I could,

I could even believe it. I'm not saying I do or don't believe it, but I could say like, Hey, we recognize that we're trying to move beyond. We're trying to repent and repair. And you know, there's,

I can believe two things at one time. I can believe that this has a really dark history and, and is trying to go in good places. I mean, a German Christian can believe the same thing. They don't need to deny that Hitler was who he was to say, no, the current state of Germany with its dark history is trying to do good things. I mean, why can't we make that separation? It seems like it's a fundamental misplaced identity. And this is the problem, is the nation, both the nation and I would argue the church,

don't understand where their identity diverged. And so what they actually think as Christian is actually Christian nationalism. And what they call as their Messiah is actually something of the world. And so in our book, chapters three and four, world. And so in our book, chapters three and four, we talk about how the church got from the teachings of Jesus to a dehumanizing doctrine of discovery, right? How did it get from a teaching of someone who said to love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you to a church that said, if you don't look like, speak like, act like, or worship like us, we can kill you. Right? How did it get to that space?

Yeah. And we actually identify in this book that it came through the creation of Christendom, Christian empire, which happened about the fourth century. But it's not even fully to blame on Constantine. I would put the blame on Eusebius, who is the bishop of Caesarea who kind of discipled and mentored, even baptized Constantine. And when he was writing his book called Ecclesiastical History, right, which he was setting out to capture the history of the church. And during the writing of the book, during the great persecution in the early fourth century, he used to, in martyrs in high esteem.

And he ends by trying to find a way to prop up a Christian empire to end the persecution. And the pivot happened when the great persecution touched him. Between books eight and nine, he inserts a book. It's called The Book of the Martyrs, and he goes into detail about the Great Persecution, and he talks about how he knew many of the martyrs personally, and he saw some of their deaths himself. So after that point, After that point, he begins propping up Constantine as a God-ordained emperor of Rome. Whereas before, he was propping up the martyrs.

They were sharing in the suffering of Christ. Interesting. Wow. Now, what's fascinating about that book, right, is because if you're writing a book called Ecclesiastical History, the history of the church. Your book doesn't have a conclusion, right? Right. Because the history of the church concludes when Christ returns. But if you read the last chapter of the last volume of Ecclesiastical History, you will find Eusebius absolutely has a conclusion, and his conclusion is the salvation that comes to Rome, not through Christ, but through Constantine. See, if you want to prop up a Christian empire, your biggest obstacle is Christ. Because when he was on earth, he was adamant that his kingdom was somewhere else. It wasn't here.

He came to not establish an earthly kingdom. He constantly told his followers, I am not here. He walked away from offers to be king, from Satan and from the people. So if you want to establish Christian empire, your biggest obstacle is Christ. And so what Eusebius had to do in his book Ecclesiastical History is he had to write Christ out of the history of the church, which is absolutely what he does. And he inserts Constantine. And you're saying that forms the foundation

of how later Christians would think about Christianity and history and Christendom and the nation. That forms the foundation of much of Western Christianity. Interesting. Wow. And it's why we don't have a problem calling the United States of America a Christian nation.

I'm like, the United States of America is not, never has been, nor is the goal to make it Christian. Right. Yeah. I don't run in those circles anymore, but that's still a thing. Like people. Oh, absolutely. I mean, everyone does it. Yeah.

It's not just the, the, the, the right, the left does it too. Right. How many people have prayed the prayer in a time of national tragedy? If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray turn from their wicked ways i will hear from heaven i will forgive their sins and i will do what heal their land america right yeah that prayer comes from the dedication of the temple. Yeah. Where God's reiterating the threats and promises of his land covenant. White Americans do not have a land covenant with God of Abraham. And there is nothing in scripture that says,

even if our country confesses its sin, that God will heal this land. Why? It's never been promised to this nation. This is not promised land. This land was stolen, ethnically cleansed, and committed genocide upon. And so, again, this is, and so people say, this is why, again, 18, 2005, right, when Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Supreme Court, needs to decide, do the Oneida Indian nation still have sovereign rights to their land? They have to say no. Why? Because if they say yes, do you own your house?

Yeah. Your land title is in question. Your land title to your house is dependent upon Native peoples continually being classified as savages. So where do we go from here? This is the problem. This is why I tell people white supremacy is a bipartisan value. This isn't just the far right. The left, they end up supporting the exact same things.

And so this is where I tell, I mean, the first thing I say, and this is actually where we take the book, is the church, both the left and the right, have to get out of bed with empire. And both sides are in bed with empire, both the left and the right. Both sides are trying to, and I often, I tell Christians this all the time, right? Which is, you can tell, I can tell, I live in Washington, D.C., I can tell who's in power. My friends come to town for what reasons right so when i first moved here in 2015 all of my left-leaning liberal christian friends were coming to town because they served on on committees and they were meeting at the white house with how did we do these things and all

my conservative friends were coming to town to protest during the four years trump was in office all my conservative friends came to town to attend meetings at the white house and all my liberal friends came to town to protest right and so the church because it's so deeply embedded with empire, it's reduced itself to either a lobbyist or a protester. And nobody's speaking truth. Nobody's being honest about what it is we're facing right now and speaking truth to power. And so if we're going to— truth to power. And so if we're going to, what has to happen is the church has to get out of bed with empire. And we actually conclude, one of the things we say in the book is in its current state, the church in America is incapable of being a part of the solution. Because it's so in bed

with empire, its only solution, both the left and the right, is going to be to make this nation more Christian, not realizing that's what caused the problems in the first place. I do feel like there is a growing minority of Christians who are resonating with what you're saying. Oh, absolutely. I don't know where that's going to lead. I don't know where that's going to lead. I don't know if it's going to make huge changes.

And I am in my own bubble that, again, probably most people listening are not going to be triggered by what you're saying. They're going to be applauding. Many of them are white. It's a fairly diverse audience. But that's still, it's confirmation bias for me because well, it sounds like

people would resonate with your saying is the majority because that's kind of the world that I now swim in, but you're out and about all over the country. You're saying no, no. Your message is not... Again, until we start talking about land titles. So here's a question

I know know little about uh european slash american history and basically nothing about native history um i heard i don't know where i heard it but so i live in idaho so i'm on shoshone land um right yeah i depends on where in idaho there's nations. Shoshone is more central east. I'm in the west, so maybe that's not. So someone said, well, wait a minute. Like the tribes that existed here before, they were warring with each other. They had no problem taking over.

Like maybe Shoshone took over Idaho from a previous tribe. So which tribe actually did they belong to? Who was it taken from first? Who was the very first tribe to occupy this plot of land? Is that true? And is that a valid complication to the whole thing? Like you named the tribe that occupied DC, like did they take that over from another tribe?

And therefore, are they just doing what the Europeans did on a more mass scale after them? doing what the Europeans did on a more mass scale after them? So there were obviously conflicts and wars going on between native nations long before Columbus got arrived here, got lost at sea and arrived here. That's not your issue. Yeah. Right? That's something for native nations to work out.

yeah right that's something for native nations to work out the fact that europeans came here and said we now own the whole place right damn everybody else right right that's so so again if native nations bring this conflict to each other that's one issue if white america says well we can't deal with this because you have, no, that's, that's not your place to say. It would be my issue though. If someone says, Hey, I really think morally you should give up your house. I'm like, who would I give it to? The last tribe that occupied this place? That's the problem right now is again, because this is systemic, right? Because, because this is a part of the founding documents and it's embedded in Supreme Court case law, even if you were to sell your house and give the title to

the Shoshone or whatever nation is from there, Native nations, we don't own our reservations. from there native nations we don't own our reservations those lands are held in trust for us by the u.s government so essentially you'd be giving the land back to the u.s government oh right okay which doesn't solve the problem right and so this is where i've been working for the past several years. One of the things I advocate for all the time, I actually I started talking about this five or six years ago. I ran for president in 2020 as an independent candidate on this platform. I am convinced that the United States of America needs a national dialogue on race, gender, and class. A conversation that I would put on par with the truth and the reconciliation commissions that

happened in South Africa and Rwanda and in Canada, but I wouldn't call ours truth and reconciliation. Right? Our country loves to talk about things like racial reconciliation. While reconciliation implies there was a previous harmony. If you understand our nation's history with race That harmony is a myth right race is a human construct. It's not it's not genetic. It's a human construct and race was created here Constructed here for the purpose of oppressing and dividing So racial reconciliation is a misnomer.

Right. I use the term racial conciliation. We have to mediate this dispute for the very first time. So we don't need a truth and reconciliation commission. We need a truth and conciliation commission. And I'm so convinced we need one. I ran for president in 2020 to advocate for it. I just opened a site on Patreon last week, and it says, what are you creating?

I'm creating a national dialogue on race, gender, and class, right? I am trying to do everything I can to initiate this dialogue and move this conversation forward. There's an Aboriginal man, his name is George Erasmus, when he was writing about the truth and reconciliation commissions that took place in Canada. He used this quote. The quote says, where common memory is lacking, where people do not share in the same past, there can be no real community. If you want to build community, you have to start by creating common memory. I love that quote. I think it fits America's history with race to a T, right? Because we have a white majority that remembers a mythological history of discovery, expansion, opportunity, and exceptionalism. And we have communities of color

that have the lived history of broken treaties, of genocide, of enslavement, of segregation, of Jim Crow, of boarding schools and internment camps, families being ripped apart at our borders. boarding schools and internment camps, families being ripped apart at our borders. And there's no common memory. And if we're honest about our history, right, there is no point in U.S. history where we can look back and It has always been broken. And so my work, the reason I wrote this book, the reason I ran for office, the reason I'm speaking to you today is I want to create this common memory. And I want to initiate this national dialogue on race, gender, and class. When I think of – and I typically prefer – and I got this from Derwin Gray many years ago, ethnic reconciliation instead of racial reconciliation. Because it has better theological roots.

The Bible doesn't talk about race. It talks about ethnicities. And I guess theologically, when I use the term, I mean, maybe I shouldn't use it. I might actually move over to conciliation. But when I think theologically about ethnic reconciliation, it's really, it goes back to the Genesis 1 where God created us male and female in his image.

And there was this kind of Edenic vision of what we're trying to get back to. So it's not so much like a historical reconciliation, because I think what you said obviously makes sense. But theologically, its roots would be deep, deep into the creation. Would that be valid or do you think it's still unhelpful? I would say the problem is race is a human construct. Yeah. But it still exists. Right. We've constructed race.

We have a society that treats you differently than it treats me simply because of your race. That's a fact. We can't dispute that. And so we have to deal with that. So this is why I would say we need racial conciliation. We have to figure out a way to either deconstruct race completely or find a way to bring conciliation, mediation of these disputes, some way to move forward for the very first time. Yeah. We have to stop pretending, right, that we have this great history.

And so this is this. During my campaign, I was observing both Donald Trump and Joe Biden were talking about, you know, if you listen to the rhetoric, right, I'll go back to 2016. Donald Trump ran to make America great again. Yeah. talking about, you know, if you listen to the rhetoric, right, I'll go back to 2016, Donald Trump ran to make America great again. Yeah. Hillary Clinton responded by saying America's great already. Yeah. Right. Joe Biden ran and said, I want to restore the soul of America. Yeah. So all these white people have this memory of this nation that used to be great, and they agree on that. They all agreed our past, our history, our foundations were great.

They disagreed if we were great in 2016 or 2020. Right. And I would say the only people who can look back on American history with nostalgia are white men. Yeah. history with nostalgia are white men. Everyone else, if they're honest, will look back and say, no, there are some problems there, right? And so this is the challenge, especially with politics. I would, understanding the trauma of white America, I would, I refer to American exceptionalism as the coping mechanism for a nation that's in deep denial of its genocidal past, as well as its current racist and sexist reality. So the way our nation comforts itself, copes with its history,

is it clings to this myth of American exceptionalism, which is rooted in the lie of white supremacy. And so if you want to be a successful politician, you have to learn how to massage that. So for example, in the 2016 campaign, after Donald Trump said, make America great again, Hillary Clinton said, America's great already. At the Democratic National Convention, President Obama jumps into the fray, right, our first black president, and he said, America's already great. Cory Booker, a rising star in the Democratic Party, he had presidential aspirations, he actually ran in 2020. In his speech, he acknowledged that women are never mentioned in the Constitution. He acknowledged

that natives are referred to as savages in the Declaration of Independence. And he acknowledged the three-fifths compromise, which was incredibly courageous. Most politicians at the national level don't acknowledge any of those systemic challenges within our foundations. But he preserved his political aspirations by telling the Democratic Party that these things do not detract from our nation's greatness. He would never say that in a room full of African Americans. He would never say that to a room full of Native peoples. But he had to say it on that stage, because if you want to win a presidential election in this country, you have to tell white landowning men how exceptional they are and how their history is justified. Yeah.

um it does seem in that the problem of american exceptionalism that that is a narrative that is way more idolized on the right than the left no i mean more i mean i'm not saying it doesn't exist on the left i'm saying it's again in the little that i dabble in listening to this voice and that voice like it seems like in progressive circles white progressive circles you can absolutely get away with talking about how bad america is and people applaud but that doesn't go well on the right but you're saying that that you can point out some of the flaws but just like cory booker did just like president obama did you have to come back at the end of the day and say but you're still exceptional huh you absolutely have to it's this is the the myth of American exceptionalism is one of the most unifying themes in American politics right in 2015

Benjamin Netanyahu right Prime Minister of. He was here in the US. He was lobbying against a nuclear deal that the Obama administration was negotiating with Iran. And he spoke to a joint session of Congress. Now that Congress, just like the Congress today, was completely divided. They were hardly even talking to each other. And he had to find a way to thread the needle, to get both sides to stand behind him. So early in his speech, he said, because America and Israel, we share a common destiny, the destiny of promised lands. Oh, wow. Wait, who said this? Netanyahu? Benjamin Netanyahu. Oh, wow. Wait, who said this? Benjamin Netanyahu. Okay, wow.

To a joint session of Congress to bipartisan applause. Huh, wow. Why do you think there is bipartisan support for Israel? The United States of America and the modern nation state of Israel have a completely codependent, dysfunctional relationship that has nothing to do with freedom or equality. We need modern nation state of Israel's Old Testament legacy of promised lands to justify what we've done to African Americans and Native Americans. And the modern nation state of Israel needs our flourishing as a nation with a manifest destiny to justify what they're doing to Bedouins

and Palestinians. Our relationship with the modern nation of Israel is completely codependent and highly dysfunctional, and it's based on this misuse of the understanding of promised lands. What about, and again, I'll just say it one more time i'm not up to speed on politics so i'm going to take your word for all of this because this is the world you live in um it seems like aren't most democrats at least more sympathetic to palestine than they are with israel like wouldn't they be more or is that really just a more very radical left, the ALCs and others? Like, there's some stuff that sounds

almost semi-antisemitic. It's not that there's not voices advocating for these things, but what wins out in the end? Okay. Right? So in 2020, the Democrats had the most diverse

pool of candidates they've ever had. More women, more people of color, more members from LGBTQIA2S+. They had one of the most diverse platforms, a group of people in their primary that they've ever had. And who do they nominate? The most status quo, institutionalized, the most status quo institutionalized white landowning male from the center they could possibly find well it's all like grassroots power right like they'll eat both sides and they remove right they removed all the people of color from the debate stage and they changed the rules yeah so michael bloomberg could join the debate stage right right? They absolutely, so the challenge with, so I talk about this a lot too.

So right now there's all this debate about voting rights and Republican states are limiting voting rights and the Democrats can't pass federal voting right laws. What you have to understand is the two-party system, the Democrat and Republican parties, work together to maintain the status quo. That's what they do. That's where they work together. So the Republicans, right, they have an increasingly racist, sexist, and white supremacist party, and they know they're not growing.

And they're terrified of voters, right? The more people who vote, the more diverse the voting pool, the less likely the Republican candidate is to win. So they're terrified of voters, so they want to limit the number of voters. Democrats, right, they always start with a much more diverse pool, but then they almost always, 99.9% of the time, will look down to the most white landowning status quo male from the center they can find. So their concern is that once they get down to that nominee, their diverse base is going to wander, right? Because they don't, the people they nominate doesn't look like or necessarily reflect the values of the diverse group of people they have supporting them. And so Democrat, the Democratic Party is terrified of third party and independent voters.

Well, especially now, given how they've handled the last year. Well, so this is where they both. So even if you look at this, isn't the bill currently being debated? But one of the bills they proposed right out of the gate when they got into office was it was titled the We the People Act. And it was kind of a comprehensive bill addressing all these issues and addressing voting rights and everything else that they were afraid of. It hasn't gone very far. But if you read that bill, right, and again, we have to address the way the Republicans are trying to

limit voting and all that, That has to be addressed. But there was a law written in the 1970s that allowed national parties to donate directly to their nominees, their general election nominees. I think it's two cents or five cents for every age eligible voter in the country. OK, so that meant in 2020, the Republican Party could give free and clear Donald Trump five million dollars. And the Democrats could give free and clear to Joe Biden five million dollars. Right. They could support him openly with that money based on that 1970 law. The We the People Act amended that law and it allowed the national parties to donate no more than $100 million directly to their candidates. Wow. directly to their candidates. So you got Republicans trying to limit voting on the right, and you have Democrats creating a further gap and chasm

between independent third-party candidates and general and the two-party candidates that they could, to a tune of an additional $100 million. Wow. two party candidates that they could to a tune of an additional 100 million dollars wow how are i mean i guess you kind of how are republicans trying to limit voting this is the way the way they're the way that they are limiting access to whether it's mail-in balloting or different voting laws that they're passing in states all around the country. The general consensus is that these and the outcry coming from marginalized communities that this is going to limit our ability to vote by not allowing polls to be open, by

making it harder to vote by mail, by doing all these things. It's going to make it harder for some of these, especially more marginalized groups to vote. And these laws are getting passed in state legislators all around the country. Because marginalized groups are more likely to vote by mail rather than in person. Is that a reality? Yeah. I mean, if you go like go to if you go to back to the navajo nation right where sometimes you're pulling places 10 20 miles from where you live you know and so to vote by mail to have a free and clear option to be able to vote by mail actually makes it very convenient as compared to driving 10 20 miles to get to a ballot box okay

so there's a lot of ways that again when you live within a marginalized community that doesn't as compared to driving 10, 20 miles to get to a ballot box. Okay. So there's a lot of ways that, again, when you live within a marginalized community that doesn't, right, that is lower in economic status, that doesn't have, you know, their more freedom from jobs to get off to vote or the ability to even to drive a lot of times, you're dependent on public transportation and so on, right? The less, the more that you reduce the ability of whether it's hours that the ballots are open or whether it's the ability to vote by mail or, you know, things like that, it makes it harder for these communities to vote. Okay. So, so the agencies are in wealthier, or no, it's not that they're in wealthier neighborhoods. It's just that wealthier people can get to them more easily because they're not relying on public transportation?

I mean, that's just one of the challenges. There's a lot of things going on. Every state is passing their, and this is what the Republicans or the Democrats are trying to address in their And this is what the Republicans or the Democrats are trying to address in their federal law. So the Republicans are tackling at the state level and the Democrats are trying to tackle it at the federal level. But again, so while the Democrats are attacking it, are addressing it at the federal level, they're also at the federal level making it harder for third partyparty independent candidates to vote – or not to vote, to run. So again – They're both – neither group cares about democracy. They care about power, right? They care about power.

They want to maintain power, period. They are trying to maintain the status quo, and the status quo is racist, sexist, and white supremacist. That's what's written into the foundations of the country. Wow, man. So, yeah, I keep hearing about all the voter side. Just trying to wrap my mind around all that. So that's actually helpful. I never understood.

I heard, I don't know if this is still a thing, but like requiring an ID. Well, it's, it's made, I mean, it's in my world, it's mainly white people who say they required an ID as racist, which would make every single airline and liquor store racist,

I guess. But, um, that, is that really a thing? I mean, are people saying like, if you require an ID,

then that's, I mean, that's one of the arguments i haven't gotten into that argument as much so i don't know the nuances of both sides um i again i've largely been i don't know i've been saying that yes these things need to be addressed but i'm also saying the democrats are not necessarily trying to address it because while they're doing it on this one issue they're actually making it harder right so in an one of the things i started saying is our country is demonstrating that we are not mature enough for a two-party system okay Okay. Huh. Interesting. Like we just can't handle it.

Yeah. It forces every dialogue, political dialogue into the binary. Yeah. Yeah. And it doesn't allow for any sort of compromise or nuance. And so when you're out of power, all you do is obstruct. And when you're in power, all you try to do is shove things down the throats. And there's no real governing.

And so I'm convinced our nation, if you look at the history of our nation, right, we're still young as a nation, right? We're maybe a preteen, right? But the problem is we have all this money and power that we've been able to do whatever we want to do. But at a maturity level, we're like a preteen right now. And we're just not mature enough as a nation to handle this simplistic two-party political system that we have. We really need another, at least one more viable party or a strong independent presence in our politics.

Because we're not mature enough to handle a two-party system i'm watching the clock too mark i know you got to go into a couple minutes but do you think there's especially after the last several years it seems like things are shaking up more than they have in the past Do you think there could ever be an independent candidate that would win? Well, again, this is why it's so important. We talk about the fact that the Democrats tried to pass this law that benefited the as as destructive to democracy in the u.s as what the republicans are trying to do on the right they're just coming at it from two different angles so what we need is george soros to convert to being an independent well this is where right this is where we we to, and the challenge is most voters identify as independent.

Really? The majority of people, a large portion of the Americans identify as independent. But when I ran as an independent, I had so many people tell me they loved my platform, they loved my campaign, they loved the things we were talking about. But I was too much of a risk. Yeah, because I wasn't an established candidate from a major party voting for me was seen as supporting Donald Trump. Oh, yeah, because there people were voting against. Trump, right, so if you have somebody else that steals that vote away, yeah. The whole thing is just a mess. And we have to address these things. But until we address them at a foundational level, we're not going to fix them.

No. Right. The analogy I used through my entire campaign was if you have a house that's built on a bad foundation, you're going to have cracks in your walls and gaps in your windowsills. You're going to have paint that's coming off and you're going to have a creaky floor. And you can replace your windows and paint your walls and recarpet your living room all you want. But until you fix the foundation, you're not going to fix the house. And because our nation refuses to address things at a foundational level neither party is interested in addressing it at a foundational level and so each year every four years we have a debate over what color to paint the walls and what kind of carpet to use on the floors what brand of windows to put in the windowsills. And no one wants to talk about the foundations.

And this is what allows our problems to continue to perpetuate themselves. We also address something very similar in the book, where if you don't address kind of the thought behind the issue, so if when you look at our history of enslavement and our history of Jim Crow, right, when you don't address the dysfunctional theological imagination that's behind it and you just address the problem, it's going to reinvent itself or reappear in another form in a different place. That's a great – that's it right there. Wow. And so we actually bring that up in the book. Soong Chan argues that very, very well.

Chapters one and two of our book on selling truths. Mark, you got another meeting to get to and I do too. Thank you so much for challenging us. I loved, I loved learning from you and listening to you. And one more quick question. Are you going to run again in 2024 or are you done? I don't know the answer to that. I'm looking at a lot of different options right now.

Like I said, I just kind of went a bit public on Patreon this past week to work at a private level, you know, just through my own platform to what can I do to continue to push this conversation forward, a national dialogue on race, gender, and class. I'll probably continue observing, reflecting through the midterms of 2022 and sometime late 2022, early 2023, I'll sit down and talk to some colleagues and some friends and say, okay, what's going to be the best thing to move forward? I had the goal of addressing these things at a foundational level, which is why I ran in 2020. Those things haven't been addressed yet. So I'm really trying to figure out what's the best way to do it. Is it going to be through another political campaign or continue to work more through the private sector? I don't have the answer right now. But yeah, so right now I'm doing everything I can to promote my book.

If people want to get a signed copy of the book, they can actually get it from my website. Okay. At wirelesshogon.com. And I can send the link to you and you can show that out if you want. I'll post it in the show notes. Support my work on Patreon. You know, I'm Wireless Hogan on almost all social media, including my Patreon. So if you find me there and if you go to my website, you'll get a link to me on Patreon, too. But yeah, I'm doing everything I can to press this conversation forward. Probably three mornings a week I sit right here and just talk about the day's event, whether it's politics or whether things going on within the church. And I'll have a deeper discussion on some

of these things, bring in some voices and have some interviews occasionally and just try to reframe things from a different perspective. So people are always welcome to join me on my social media where I'm doing my best to move this conversation forward. Awesome. Well, I'll put all that in the show notes, Mark. Thanks so much for being on Theology in Raw. Appreciate it. Music Music Music Music