Theology in the Raw - S9 Ep952: A Christian Perspective on Race and Racism: Rasool Berry

Episode Date: March 7, 2022

Rasool Berry serves as teaching pastor at The Bridge Church in Brooklyn, New York. He also is the Director of Partnerships & Content Development with Our Daily Bread Ministries.  He hosts the Where Ya From? podcast which tells the stories of influencers at the intersection of faith and culture. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.  In this episode, Rassol and I talk about a biblical theology of ethnic reconciliation and bring his to bear on the current conversation about race and racism in the church and America. We talk about reparations, systemic racism, how racism is in our cultural climate, affirmative action, and many other topics. https://www.rasoolberry.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.

Hey, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. I have on the show today Rasul Berry. Rasul is the teaching pastor at the Bridge Church in Brooklyn and a team member with Embark, a nonprofit focused on millennials. He graduated from University of Pennsylvania with a degree in Africana Studies and Sociology. He is published in Christianity Today, Relevant Magazine, The Gospel Coalition, Faithful Magazine, The Witness, and several other spaces. And Rasul is just, as you'll hear, he's amazing. I love talking to Rasul. He's honest, he's humble, he's wise, he's gracious, and he's become one of my go-to people when I'm trying to get my arms around the race conversation, which is where we go today. So please welcome back to the show for the second time, the one and only Rasul Berry.

All right. Hey, friends, I'm back. I am back here with Rasul Berry. As some of you know, Rasul was on the podcast a few months ago in a dialogue about race with Samuel Say. And that was an interesting dialogue. I mean, we kind of got stuck on some things. And it's one of those two-hour conversations that needed another 10 hours. But ever since then, man, I'm like, man, I want to have Rasul back on just by yourself. So this is long overdue. This should have been done last year. But anyway, thanks so much for coming back on Theology and Raw. I'm super excited about this conversation.

Preston, thanks again for having me. I'd love to be back and love to continue the dialogue we started. Cool. Yeah. And so we have some mutual friends, Ed Uzinski. Yes. for having me uh i'd love to be back and love to continue the dialogue we started cool yeah and uh so we have some mutual friends ed usinski and um yes there's another guy oh i'm blanking on his three or four people that know you personally i'm trying to think of i think he's a missionary and you stayed at his house i want a long time ago. Well, you know, I toured with bands for like seven years and I stayed in missionaries' houses. Because I was a missionary.

I was serving with crew in the impact movement. So that's how Ed and I know each other, being on staff. So unfortunately, for a lot of people, staying at a missionary's house would be a simple enough way of narrowing down who they're talking about that that would help. In my case, you've narrowed it down to about maybe 100 people. Actually, I do know it. I won't say his name just because I don't like saying names unless somebody gives me permission. But I have the name in mind.

Okay, so here's what I want to do. I love how you approach the race conversation because you do so with such grace, thoughtfulness, and you're a pastor. I mean, you are never just wrestling with kind of abstract stuff. Your heart is for the church. From what I have seen you both online and our conversations, I mean, you have such a breadth of knowledge, both of kind of the more political national conversation, but also more the theological conversation. And this is going to be an uncut, unfiltered conversation. Okay. So I'll say it like this. I feel like you do a very good job communicating to white Christians in a way that's going to speak to them, move the needle, and yet not be so,

how do I say it? Overly challenging. Say, you know, where you push somebody too far, too quickly to where they're like, I don't know what to do with this. I feel like you really understand white evangelicalism. So anyway, I want you for the next 50 minutes to pastor our audience through this incredibly important conversation. Yeah. I almost just want to say go,

but let me set it up like this. Like the last, I mean, couple of years especially has really brought to the surface this conversation in a way that has been done before. I'm in the wake of Rodney King, obviously, the Civil Rights Movement and everything. I feel like there's moments in the last few generations where this has happened. But this one seems pretty intense. And it's in many ways dividing the church and how people even go about this conversation.

I just looked at my Facebook page and I was being accused of being a CRT advocate and woke, whatever any of that means. But anyway, help us to think through this. How can we as a church wrestle with this race conversation in a way that models Jesus? Yeah, no, thanks. And I appreciate the kind words. And I think whenever we as believers engage in an issue or try to think through an issue,

you know, it's important for our worldview to be framed in the story of God. And, you know, I believe what Ecclesiastes is true, that there's nothing new under the sun, right? And so I think one of the just important points of reference for me is always to try to understand the human experience through the context of the experience that God has revealed in Scripture, that God has revealed about all of humanity. Now, that's not to say that there are sometimes some steps you have to take to get there, right? Like, there isn't a specific chapter and verse that I can pull up to say, how frequently should I use my cell phone? And, you know, how do I know to, you know, what should I do about downloaded music? You know what I mean? And so, but there are principles that we can draw on from the book of Proverbs, from the

concepts of Sabbath and rest that can help us in our understanding of what to do with technology. And the same thing is true, but I would even say to an even more central degree in the conversation of race and ethnicity. God created humanity in his image, right? The Imago Dei we see in Genesis chapter 1 and expounded on the rest of scripture, that is an incredibly unifying picture and vision of our shared collective origin and our shared collective destiny, you know? In Revelation, we see in Revelation 7-9, every tribe, tongue, and nation worshiping before the throne. And that picture that John sees is one in which there's still ethnicity, there's language, there's culture, but distinctions. And yet there's still this unifying theme of worship. you go from Abraham in particular on, you see God working his redemptive plan through a particular people group, the people of Israel, the Jews, and that that uniqueness has its own perils that we

see throughout the Old Testament. So in other words, the biblical story makes space and makes room for conversations about human conflict over what we would now know as race, but, you know, would be more in the biblical context, ethnicity or nationality. So we see Miriam, right, being struck with leprosy when she criticizes Moses for marrying a dark-skinned, you know, African woman. We see, you know, these different nuances of the story in Esther, where Haman is enraged that Mordecai, who's a Jew, would not dare bow to him. And so, therefore, it tries to exterminate all the Jews, right? But even in the New Testament, this story really picks up steam and clarity. When in the book of Acts, where all of a sudden, you know, the the the disciples are met with this contrast and you see God opening up the floodgates.

Right. With Peter and seeing a vision from heaven and don't call, you know, what I have cleaned dirty. And then Cornelius comes and he's supposed to sit at Cornelius's house to eat. And then spirit falls on Cornelius and all these Gentiles. And it's like, wait, wait a minute, what's going on? Then Paul and him going to the Gentiles and not just the Jews. And all this picks up in really, I think, Acts chapter 15, the Jerusalem council, I think really gives us a dynamic picture of this story where there are people who are saying, wait a minute, these people have to become Jewish. They have to become they have to follow the law. That was the religious part of it. But also they have to deny their culture and their ethnicity because there was a sense of superiority that the Jews had begun to have, right?

They would say this prayer even, you know, every day, you know, thank God, thank you, God, that you did not make me a Gentile or a woman. And so in this council, you see this incredible conversation happen with, wait a minute, these are all good Jewish boys and girls who keep kosher and who, you know, circumcise their babies in the eighth day and all these things, and they are Jews. And it's like, what do we do about the Gentiles? And what ends up happening in that passage, in that chapter, is when Paul steps up and Barnabas steps up and say, look, we are seeing God reveal himself to the Gentiles. When Peter steps up and tells his story, all of a sudden, and N.T. Wright makes this clear, that this is not merely a religious conversation. This is also an ethnic and cultural conversation. And do the Gentiles have to become Jewish-like in order to follow Jesus and not just follow the law.

And those things are intertwined. And what they end up finding, what they end up concluding is, let's not be a hindrance to them. And so at that point, they say, look, they gave them very minimum rules. Sexual purity, don't eat meat with the blood in it, go and follow Jesus. And that breaks open the floodgates even more to the point, and this is the last thing, and I'll be quiet, in Acts chapter 17. See, a lot of times we chop up the scripture in these chapters and verses without realizing they weren't originally in these chapters and verses. So 17, when Paul goes before Mars Hill, and a lot of us like to quote that and frame that when he says, I see you're very religious and you even have a statue to the unknown God, and he begins to quote their poets. We somehow divorced that from 15 when they got the green light to say, go and embrace the, you know, preach the gospel and use the Gentile cultures, the Greek cultures, in order to do it. So now in Acts 17, Paul is

literally quoting their poets and referencing their points of reference in order to get the gospel known. And so the central point to that that I take away from is that when you read the book of Acts, you know, in Acts chapter 1, verse 8, when it says, you know, you'll be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, out of most parts of the world. Really, if you step back and look at it, this is a story about ethnic tensions and a story about conflict and how do we as a church wrestle with those things. And we get really helpful insights for today about how do we handle this conversation about race. So the first part of that is it's a gospel conversation. It's an important conversation for the church. The second part of that is God actually cares about it and he's given us some

insights. And it's really important to the gospel, this aspect of what does it take for humans who look different, who come from different backgrounds, who there's power dynamics involved, what does it take for them to actually become brothers and sisters in Christ, man, the good news is we got a whole lot of research in scripture to give us clarity about how to make that happen, and as well as the insight that it's hard. I'm just going to wind you up, man, and let you go. So let me, here's how I have worded what you've said. Let me know if this is good language. Like I've said, and I can, it's really easy to show from scripture. You've already cited many of the passages, but that ethnic reconciliation is a first tier gospel issue. That scares some people than certain crowds, but it's, let me, Romans one through five, it is an essential thread to Paul's argument in Romans 1 through 5.

And it comes to a head. I mean, it's there in chapter 2. Even in chapter 1, sets up 2, condemns everybody, chapter 3. But then in 328, is God the God of the Jews only? Is he not also the, you know? And then the entire chapter 4, the Abraham narrative is all about, it's primarily about these ethnic tensions. And then we are all one in Adam.

Jew, you, even you Jew are part of Adam, you know? So the whole argument there in one of the most beloved, and then it comes up in 14 and 15 again, right? But how about Ephesians 2? Not the first half. It's beautiful. Vertical reconciliation. Yes.

2.11 to 22 is wrapped up in that with horizontal reconciliation. And it says explicitly that part of the goal of the cross in 2.11 to 15 or whatever is to tear down ethnic barriers. This isn't abstract unity, it's unity across ethnic lines. A couple more and then I'll stop. But in Galatians 2, when Paul confronts Peter for removing himself from the Gentiles, so he's now rebuilding that ethnic wall, the ethnic barriers, Paul says, you are not walking in step with the truth of the gospel.

So when people say, yeah, this is good to do, but it's not a gospel issue, then I don't know how you... Paul says, you're not walking in step with the truth of the gospel. And in Galatians 3.8, he says that God preached the gospel to the Gentiles ahead of time to Abraham saying, in you, all the nations will be blessed. And the whole argument, he set up a whole argument there of Gentile inclusion. And he says, God preached the gospel to Abraham ahead of time. So even there in chapter two and three, the very word gospel is wrapped up in this issue. I'm preaching to the choir to you, but I mean, just to, so how would you, so is that fine to word it that way, that ethnic

reconciliation is an essential component to the gospel? I know that's kind of vague, like, what does that mean? But we can't say this is just some secondary thing. I think it's an essential implication and application of the gospel.

Yeah. Implication and application. Right. And I just add that bit of nuance, you know, because sometimes those of us in this work are accused of a type of legalism or you're adding to salvation, you know, by God's grace alone through faith. salvation, you know, by God's grace alone through faith. And so I'm just making it clear by when I say implication and application that this isn't a somehow you need to be a quote-unquote social justice warrior in order to be saved. It's an expression of the fact that when Jesus is asked, what's the greatest commandment? And he says, love the Lord your God. And the second is like it, to love your neighbor as yourself. There is an inclusive, an all-inclusive package that somehow loving your neighbor is a reflection of loving God, right?

it demonstrates itself in a type of love, in a type of reconciliation, in a type of justice-seeking that does have enormous implications for how we interact with each other. And the application is that, therefore, we go and do something about it. And it's, I mean, again, Ephesians 2, it's part of the goal of the cross. One of the goals of the cross, if I could put it like that, was Jesus's death was intended in part to tear down ethnic barriers. I mean, that's kind of exactly what Paul says. So we have whatever... Yeah, okay. Implication feels a little weak to me. I know what you're... But yeah, that critique. But that same critique, I mean, if I said is the definition of marriage a first-tier gospel issue, most people that – the camp that you're – that maybe you get critiqued on, they would say absolutely. Is justification by faith a first-tier gospel issue?

Yeah, yeah. Well, even justification by faith, as N.T. Wright and many others have shown, has strong the background of that very concept. Sure. Let me clarify it. I think what I meant to say is an implication of justification and an application of justification. But again, this is where even my own background and being kind of shaped by evangelicalism, I think that there is justification to the gospel. No, it's an aspect of the gospel. The gospel is bigger than that. So in that sense, you're right in saying it is accurate to say that this is a first-tier gospel issue, period, end of sentence.

And then we just kind of have to work out, well, what I don't mean by that is how one experiences just being justified. That was, I think, the... We're not justified by doing things toward ethnic reconciliation. But if we are truly justified, this should be a very natural outflow of... Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. We get hung up, right? I mean, on the initial salvation, sanctification, and not wanting to smuggle one into the other. So, yeah, I get that. I mean, yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, how are we doing with this? Obviously, a lot of conversations to the fore, a lot of books being written, a lot of books being read. Are we better now than we were two years ago? Or have we gone backwards? Or is it pad of that version of what we just said is the biblical story or a key component of it, of like Ephesians 2 breaking down these barriers, that that's not a shared perspective to begin with. And that's part of the challenge, is that oftentimes those who disagree that this is a key component of what we should be talking about as a gospel issue will often add to that disagreement an accusation that those who are leaning into these issues are doing so being more shaped by a secular,

godless culture than they are by a biblical story. And so I think that that's part of the challenge, is that even, you know, like that, you know, you talk about like in being married that you should fight fair, right? Like in part of fighting fair is that you don't make accusations. You just deal with what the person is actually saying and engaging with and go from there. And I don't think we've been fighting fair in the body. And so that creates a problem. But then beyond that, there's an aspect of the, I would say, maybe theological imagination or of what, how to think about these moments of conflict, whether they be George Floyd or Breonna Taylor or, you know, a racial discrimination issue that comes up like Brian Flores in the NFL or something. And I think that there are how to even what our posture should be for those. And even our interpretation of those type of moments have been widely divergent.

But I don't I think part of the problem is that there's been more of an attempt. And of course, you know, let's just be honest, we said we're going to keep it 100 in evangelical circles. We are more shaped by a certain skepticism of the realities of race being a factor or systemic racism being a thing. And so in our cultural landscape, there's usual pushback in the very notion that this is something that should be taken seriously. In our particular, you know, you know, kind of part of the Christendom. And so I think in that sense, those positions and postures have been hardened in very institutional ways. in very institutional ways. I just co-wrote an article, a book review of Owen Shraken's Christianity and, gosh, Wokeness. I've heard of it. I haven't read it. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. In any case, and I think in that book, there is a type of misrepresentation of, you know, yeah, Christianity and Wokeness, how the social justice movement is hijacking the gospel and the way to stop it. I think that's the types of challenges that we've had. But then on the flip side, we've seen greater strides made in other aspects of evangelicalism of actually having the conversation. I just participated in a webinar with Christianity Today and our Daily Bread Ministries on Black History Month, and seeing dialogues like that happen, and resources move forward in that space. So I think it's a tale of two churches in that way. Yeah. You have a better pulse on this than I do, but I definitely resonate with that. How much of it do you think is due to kind of political allegiances that have kind of co-opted

the church? Let me, I guess, tease out that question. It just seems like, I mean, this has always been there, but I feel like it's just been galvanized the last couple of years, especially since 2016, primarily, I would say, but where Christians have, they have such tribal allegiance to a certain side of the political aisle and they're getting discipled by certain news outlets and those are getting more polarized. And it probably happened on both sides. But I guess Christians that are nervous about the race, any kind of race conversation, because it seems like it's a secular left-wing thing or whatever, typically, obviously, that's going to be fear among right-wing Christians. And I just wonder if they weren't ever on the news,

if they just kind of, I don't know, read the Bible. And we all have cultural things that are influencing us. But I just – I don't know. Like I'll tune in to like popular right-wing, left-wing outlets, whatever. I'm like, oh, okay. That's where they're getting that from. Right, right. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Yeah, well, I'm sorry.

Go ahead. No, no. I'm kind of just circ America is a partisan issue. I think it goes much, much deeper than that. Okay. And in fact, there's a recent book. I interviewed Duquan on my podcast, and he just co-wrote a book with Greg Thompson called Reparations. It's an incredible book that kind of deals with the issue of reparations or that, you know, should there be some type of financial restitution or some type of restitution to black people in particular in light of, you know 250 plus years of slavery as in america etc right but honestly is persuasive and compelling of a case that they made about reparations that

wasn't the biggest takeaway for me in the book the biggest takeaway for me was their discussion and description of racism and it was was something that, because I think before we can even have the conversation about how to fix a problem, we have to know what the problem is that we're talking about. And oftentimes it's, well, I'll just read a quote from there. They say, American racism is not simply a personal prejudice, a relational division, or a specific institutional injustice, but something much more profound. of being and doing that is embedded in our structures of meaning, morality, language, and memory, and expressed in patterns of individual, social, and institutional behavior. So there's a lot there, right? But what they start off by saying is, and this is definitely speaking to the evangelical space, where it's not just a

matter of personal prejudice. It's not someone just saying the N-word in a mean or nasty way or whatnot, or even a relational division that may cause. Or even, and then they push it back against the more progressive, so that's the conservative narrative. Then they push it back a little bit against the progressive narrative, or a specific institutional injustice. They say it's something much more profound than systemic injustice or systemic racism. They speak of it as a culture, a cultural disorder in particular, of a comprehensive way of being, doing that is embedded in our structures. Look at this, of meaning, morality, That is embedded in our structures. Looks at this of meaning, morality, language and memory. So that's both individual and social and institutional.

And when I read that, I thought to myself, wow, that is a very comprehensive and compelling way of thinking about race and racism in America. And it really rings true for me. And the thing is that they lean on is saying, we're not the first ones to say this, that really, if you go back and see the discussions that were had at the time of, you know, 100 years ago, 200 years ago, that 50 years ago, these same ways of description of America, of racism as a cultural disorder were used. And I have another, I'll pause there to get your take on that definition. But you see why I'm saying that that's not partisan. That goes deeper. If you go often, like the more, the radical Republicans, if you were to go back to the 1850s, when Lincoln was a Republican, they were anti-slavery, you know, they were more,

you know, about abolition than they were about keeping the system in place. That was Democrats. You know, then if you, you know, go to since like the 60s, and JFK and Lyndon B. Johnson, and then the Civil Rights Act, they kind of flipped. And so, but either way, you know, it goes deeper than any of those political party affiliations. It's something much more profound. What do you think about that? Well, I don't have the pay grade to give a educated opinion on that. I do have just thoughts and questions that come up. Here's one that I would love. Yeah, I guess let me frame it as a question. Like, well, what would – how would you define a racist then? Because in that definition, I think I would be a racist because I'm part of and one might even say benefited from that culture.

And if that's true, if kind of everything is racism, then how do we distinguish between that, me and David Duke? Is David Duke a racist? Yes. Am I a racist? Yes. Well, if everybody's a Nazi, then what do we do with Hitler? And now the same problem with even like the term violence, now people say, well, words are violence. And, you know, a, a, a, you know, you can look at somebody and that could be violence. It's like, what about people who are, you know, actually experienced Rwandan genocide? Like, well, they went through violence. Well, the teacher gave you a dirty look and that's violence. And somebody had their family slaughtered by their neighbor. And that's like, I don't like, I need a different word then to distinguish me from David Duke.

Yeah. That's great. That's a great point. And I think this is when we and this is why a who isn't, you know, recently you may remember, you know, uh, uh, Rogan, uh, you know, Joe Rogan came out with a, there was video of him, uh, using the N word and referring to a black neighborhood is planet of the apes. And, uh, and he came out and was like, that was horrible, but that wasn't being racist. That wasn't racist. And it's kind of like, I don't know what in his mind, like what crosses the threshold of racism beyond calling a black neighborhood Planet of the Apes. But the reality is, I think there's that one of the ironic downsides to the moral authority of the civil rights movement has been the absolute, it's almost like the worst thing that, you know, you can be,

someone can be tarred or feathered with this label is racist. And so because it has this almost mystical, you know, power behind this name, then it's like, nobody wants to be associated. But I actually, when I think about it, I think about the question more about, like, I think the gender conversation helps me to think about this in a more nuanced way, right? Like, I remember when the Me Too movement kind of got prominence and the Harvey Weinstein, you know, scenario came out. And and it was, to me, very shocking thing to see all these like powerful men, you know, kind of be confronted with, you know, with things that they did. And I remember talking to my wife and daughter and being like, man, this is shocking that this is happening, isn't it?

And they were looking at me like, no. And I'm like, really, why not? And they began to talk about their experiences walking to the car or walking to the subway and catcalls and the types of ways in which just their very existence in a male-dominated sexist culture, they experience these things, microaggressions, et cetera, on a regular basis. And I became aware of the fact that like, wow, like, I don't know how to make of my obliviousness to that, but I do know that I had work to do and that, um, that this moment was helping me to be more aware of scenarios in which gender was playing a part than I was previously privy to. And I just, I would just offer this. I don't think that our definition, like, I don't think it's primarily important to define and refine what is a racist and what isn't. I think the more important question

is understanding what racism is and, you know, working toward steadily, gradually helping myself to be aware of this cultural disorder that exists and how it is the air that I breathed, how it is the very, you know, perspectives that I, you know, that I've, you know, embraced at various levels and how I can move away from that and move closer to something that's more like what the Bible regards as seeing the human dignity of all people. And so that was what I offer. I think that the label thing is such a, you know, I think it's important to call something

out and say that's a racist act. And obviously, but I think what does it, how do you define that? And what does somebody have to do? I'm less interested in that than I am helping us understand and see what it is that we're dealing with. Well, like you said, cultural disorder. I like that. I mean, I think I like it. I like that. I think I like it. It's like vague enough and yet comprehensive enough. It's almost like I'd want to say – well, and again, I'll say it one more time. I'm speaking from ignorance here, just thinking out loud, trying to think through this. racial components woven throughout it or whatever. Right. Because I would hesitate. Let me help you out here.

I'll give you another part just to kind of make this more nuanced. Because it's not just a cultural disorder like anything, but they will go on to say that racism is fundamental to American culture. Now, they don't say that it's the only thing fundamental to the culture, but that it is fundamental to understanding and interpreting American history. So I'll give you an example. Have you heard of the Cornerstone speech before? I don't think so. Okay. So Alexander Stevens gave this speech. He was the vice president of the Confederacy. So this is a speech in 1861, March 21st, 1861. And he is essentially rallying the troops and giving them their kind of moral authority and vision for why this is a war that they should be engaged in.

And I just, I won't give you the whole thing because it's pretty long, but I would encourage people to read it. But this, when I read this, this blew me away. I'll just give you a, so he talks about how providence, right, God gave people the idea of the institution of American, you know, liberties and freedoms in the Constitution. And he said that it was based on a fundamental problem or in its assumption that all men were created equal, right? So then he goes on to say this, our new government, the Confederacy, is founded upon the exact opposite idea. Its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man, that slavery, subordination to the superior race,

is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first in the history of the world based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. And in fact, he would go on to say that those in the North, they still cling to these errors and with the zeal. And one of the most striking characteristics of insanity in many cases is forming correct conclusions from fancied or erroneous premises. So with the anti-slavery fanatics, their conclusions are right if their premises were. They assume the Negro is equal and hence conclude that he is entitled to equal privileges and rights with the white man. If their premises were correct, their conclusions would be logical

and just, but their premises were being wrong, their whole argument fails. This is a fascinating speech. He's saying it more clearly than I've ever heard it said before, right? He's laying out the case to say that fundamental to this vision of the Confederacy is the quote unquote great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man. Boom. Yeah, go ahead. Well, so let me put my right wing hat on. I can only wear it for a few minutes. It starts to get itchy. Absolutely. 100%. No debate that there is profound racism in America's history. I mean, that speech is probably could have been given by many, many other people around that time. Slavery is a moral atrocity. Jim Crow is a moral atrocity. That was then, this is now. Sure, there are individual racists.

There's always going to be individual racists of any society. And we should address that where it comes up, where there is racism, acts of racism, absolutely address it. But to say that that kind style of racism is still just as pervasive today or that it's as pervasive of a problem now, I mean, that just isn't true. Again, I'm still wearing the hat. It's a federal – if you had something inscribed that was racist, it's a federal effect. It's illegal now. Redlining, we've dealt with that. And yes, there are lingering effects of this and we need to keep doing that. It doesn't just end overnight.

There's lingering effects and there's white people with inherited land that was a result of redlining and this stuff. And yeah, we should absolutely work towards rectifying all of that. But we are in a very, different era now how do you respond yeah yes did i summarize it well is that is that i i think that that is a uh fair summarization some summary of the kind of pushback to something and i guess i would just circle back and go to me the fascinating thing about this speech and why I quoted it at length is not look at a particular racist person and what this particular individual said. Isn't that so terrible? It's to step into the mindset of the. the vision of what was at stake and why and to say that fundamentally what he's saying there he was seeing their cause is not just moral holy people go on the you know and and this was not just some individual that he go man he's off his rocker this is the vice president of the confederacy

and this is very much echoing the vision of the perspective. And so it'd be one thing if someone said, you know what, this whole Confederacy, this whole idea of keeping people in a race-based chattel slavery is wrong. So we should stop. But that's not how the Civil War ended. It ended because one side had military advantage and defeated another side militarily. And we know that this idea, the very ideals, continued on because what happens at the end of Reconstruction, you know, the Union brings in troops into the South to maintain, to overthrow the racial caste system that had existed up until slavery, and then that was upended by the abolition of slavery. And so then the troops leave in 1877 because of a guy, William Tapp, wanting to be president and signing, you know, doing a handshake agreement. And as a result of that, the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, the rise of racial terrorism, the rise of lynching,

why are they doing that? What was the explanation given for the segregation that we see going all the way up to the 1960s, you know, written in law. It was based on the same thing that Stevens is talking about here, a cultural disorder that sees this idea of racial supremacy, right, or white supremacy as central to the identity of the history of the present and of what is, you know, you look at Birth of a Nation, the movie that came out in like 19, you know, early 1900s, and they reimagined the Civil War, what happens at the end of the Civil War as like basically black men portrayed by white men in blackface as basically raping women and being lazy and all these things. So this is why it's important to

see this as a cultural phenomenon and imagination. This goes deeper than just laws. And again, you go, okay, well, it would be another thing if Dr. King gives a speech and everybody just is so mesmerized that they go, you know what, we need to stop doing all of these things. But if you look at the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act and fair housing, it was met with opposition every step of the way. That's just 50 years ago. And so when I see it as a cultural disorder, it helps me to recognize the fact that we're dealing with not just personal biases, but we're also building with systems that were in place to keep certain things that way and that have continued to still lean on those same narratives, those same ideas and those same structures. And it doesn't take just somebody with a Klan hood in the background to keep the system of criminal justice maintaining and skewing toward a racial bend. It doesn't take somebody with malice to keep it in place. The system's already been built that

way. It just takes somebody to maintain it. Right. No, that's super helpful. I mean, so would you say there's more than just a faint residue of that system? Because again, I mean, I could take the most Trump-excited person, you know, whatever, in Idaho. I live in Idaho. And they would still say segregation was an atrocity. Everything you're saying there, like, yeah, yeah, that was horrible. We should never do that.

I'm not for that you know um so you know they would say yeah we we've we've moved beyond that and sure there might be a residue of this cultural disorder around race but um they might even say again put my right wing hat back you know now the opposite's true know, where if I say something that could even be taken slightly racist on Twitter, I'd be banned, you know, from, you know, social media outlets or whatever, which, you know, isn't a minor thing when sometimes your businesses rely on that, whatever. If I'm applying for a job and there's, you know, a person of color applying, I feel like there's a better chance they'll get it than me. It's how people, um, yeah, I do think that we have to take seriously the disorientation and, and those, and the real among many disaffected people that, um, somehow being white, um, somehow being white is being considered to be evil. And in these dialogues about race, that there is a real sense of a hardship or disadvantage or a seeking of returning, of revenge that is in play in these racial conversations. I think that that's a real

perception that exists. And I think that there's a couple layers to it. I go back to this cultural disorder conversation because, again, if you go back to the initial battles, like how did people like who were following the instructions of Bloody Sunday, for example, when the protesters went across the bridge, you know, in Selma Montgomery to go on a voting rights, you know, march. you know, march, right? And they were met with law enforcement and sick dogs and broken skulls and attacked violently and viciously in what is now known as Bloody Sunday. You know, I was listening recently to actually one of the folks that were on the discussion of Black History Month with Christianity Today. His name is Reverend Noel Hutchinson. He did an interview with one of the women who were, she was a 17-year-old at the time of that march, and just happened to reference that they went back and kind of interviewed one of the key, some of the key law enforcement officers at that time

today, because this is, you know, a lot of the folks still alive, you know, that were there. And he said, I wouldn't do anything different. Like I was following the, trying to obey the law and, and, and they were, you know, and following my orders. And so that's what I did. I think that, um, the, but how do you reconcile that with somebody that's somebody's pawpaw right there? That's someone's grandfather, that's someone's there, that's someone's grandfather, that's someone's husband and father. And so I think the reckoning of how to understand our past and our present is very difficult and what that means and what are the implications of that. I think people hear something different than what it says. So if I start from the premise that everything is fair and I got what I deserve from hard work. And then someone puts in place,

like in the NFL, the Rooney rule to that somehow minority candidate has to be interviewed for a coaching position or for executive position. Then if I'm already told that the world is fair and the NFL is fair and is based on merit, Then I'm looking at that as preferential treatment. Right. And so that begins to feel like a disadvantage in spite of the fact that there's only one black coach in the NFL. And he puts out this racial discrimination lawsuit. And it sounds like to you as preferential treatment because you haven't embraced the reality that there's been something askew on the entire, on every single white person as there. And that's not what the, that's not what is meant or implied, but that is often what is heard. And I think we do have to be aware of that and try to help people, you know, hear more clearly what's being said. Yeah. That's helpful. I'm, I'm looking at the time too.

I know you got to go in a few minutes and we're just, we're just getting started, dude. That's all good. I have to reschedule my appointment. I'll do that because this is important. Gosh, so I'm still – because I can't – I mean, so I'm going to speak freely now as myself. I don't know. I can see both sides of it really.

Like when people – I don't know. And it is hard as a, as a white person, I, I 100% admittedly am, have blinders on and, and I don't have the experience and kind of like, I went through the same thing with the gender thing with you. Like it was just, I think last year, a girl, um, like a girl told me like, was it a girl? Somebody said like, hey, you know, whenever I go, a girl said, whenever I go for a jog, it's, there's anxiety. There's, you know, I think about it. Like, where am I going to go? Is it getting dark? All this stuff in my, you know, and I've like, I never thought of, I'll go running at midnight if I wanted to. And I never even think about like, you know, is somebody going to attack me?

You know, I can go, I take my shirt off, go run down, whatever. And like, I don't even think about that. And women joggers I know, so no, every time I leave the house and go on a jog, it's through my mind. Times that by a thousand. of daily routines have I not experienced that have just, well, are just embedded in how I can even begin to process what you're talking about. So I don't know where I'm going with that. I just want to like, I will always kind of like what the, I mean, you know, I've spent years in the LGBTQ conversation and I always begin by saying that whatever I say, there's always going to be a, a padded distance between me and this conversation is no matter how many

conversations I've had, no matter how many LGBT friends I've, you know, made, you know, made over the years, there, there will always be this, this distance, you know? Right. But doesn't it like, so I think in both of those examples that you just gave, it gives great context that you have developed an awareness of the fact that the stakes or the risks involved with you, that there's a story in those communities that runs deeper than what your experience is as someone who doesn't who's not threatened by the same realities that they're threatened by, right? You never had to think about what would happen if I brought my, you know, someone I was interested in and want to go in a dance, if that might mean that I get kicked out the house, or you didn't have to think about, well, you know, might I, you know, be

attacked if I go out for a run at midnight and my clothes is a bit, you know, tight. And I think that that's the type of perspective taking that is really endemic to the scripture. Actually, it's beautifully pictured in terms of the gospel. We see it in Christ in Philippians chapter two, you know, when Paul, you know, admonishes, you know, the people there have this same mind in you that was also in Christ Jesus, right? And, you know, the people there. Have this same mind in you that was also in Christ Jesus, right? And, you know, like, do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility, count others more significant than yourselves. And then he says, and you know what it would be like that way? Jesus, who, even though he was God, did not think equality with God is something

to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking on the form of a servant being born in a likeness of men. And that humbling took him to the cross. And because of that, God exalted him. And I think that that is the same posture that we need to pursue these conversations of marginalization and recognizing that, one, like we see it in Acts chapter 6, like with the widows, the Hellenistic widows who were being neglected by the daily distribution of food. There's a complaint that arises that the disciples who are Hebraic Jews, they're part of the majority culture in this discussion, this situation. A complaint arises from the Hellenistic Jews that their widows are being neglected. And so what does

Paul do? He, and I mean, you know, the disciples, Peter and the others, they gather, they have a meeting, they hear the grievances of the marginalized or minority community, and then they make some changes to empower those people from that community to actually be in positions of leadership in order to serve more effectively those communities. And the passage never explains, was it intentional? Was it an oversight? We don't know. We just know that there was a power dynamic and there were people being discriminated against based on their ethnicity and language or, you know, like that was the determining factor. They decided to do something about it and they empower people and they listen to people and it's that it pleased the whole congregation. And so that is the type of response that's available to us when we see that, well, maybe I don't get the full picture. Maybe this maybe it's possible that what feels to me like, quote unquote, reverse racism is actually a corrective that is meant to address something that I can't particularly see.

You know, and so when you, yeah, go ahead. No, no, no. The way you worded it there is exactly what I've been kind of processing. Cause yeah, I mean, I, yeah, I, in the past I've been kind of bothered by that. You know, I, I, I pursued academics. I wanted to be a, you know, I want to get a PhD and teach in a college and everything. And, you know, the biggest joke was, yeah, good luck getting a job as a white straight male, you know, at a university, you know. a major debt over it and had published articles as a PhD. Like I did, I worked as hard as I could. And I got like two interviews out of my, I got a few interviews. One, I won't say which one, but there was one that said, yeah, everything on paper looks great, but you're not a woman.

Like we do need to hire a female faculty member. And I was bummed. It was kind of like my top school I wanted to teach at, you know. But like what you're saying is like, yes, but we have a huge over male representation on our faculty. We are trying to rectify kind bringing a female perspective along with credentials and everything is something we value, you know? So I'm like, I could see that too. So I don't know, over the years I've tried to see both sides of it. And I'm trying to hold intention to, this is, I guess, maybe going a different, well, similar direction, but like the this systemic issues versus individual agency um you know most conservative white people might say yeah if you work hard and when the cop pulls you over just you know don't just do what he says i'm sorry to laugh it's it, but white people still – yeah, just obey the law, man. Just obey the law. So I don't know. When people only emphasize systemic stuff, it's like, I don't want to overcorrect too far in that direction because I do think – I think it's actually going to be dehumanizing to not also emphasize the role of individual agency too. I have another question, but I would love to get your thoughts on

Yeah, sure. You brought out a few things. And that's where I say like a corrective. So when I go back to Act 6, right, one of the things I kind of just pointed out to people that in order for the deacons, you know, Stephen and Nicanor and others to have been selected, that meant some people got fired, right? Like some people lost their job. Whoever was distributing the food, like they were like, hey, come, you know, bring your clipboard and your keys. And that's going to be, you know, we're going in a different direction. And so, in any case, I think the implication of that is that in order to rectify some things, it does take intentionality to, like you said, if there's women underrepresented in a certain field, then it makes sense to intentionally find qualified women. And again, this is the thing. Are they underrepresented because they're just not qualified or are they underrepresented because somehow there's some structural, cultural disorders that are causing them to be undiscovered, right? And so the case that is being made is, no, there's actually lots of qualified people who have the credentials if they were given the chance or they have the

capability if they were given a chance. But because of something, a disorder in the culture, that aspects of sexism, aspects of racism prevent that from being the case. This came up recently with President Biden announcing that he was going to select a Black woman to be a Supreme Court justice. And there were allegations that this is somehow, you know, unfair to, you know, to limit the court selections based on that way. And it's like, only if you assume that there aren't actually, the reason why there has never been a Black woman in the court is because there'd never been a black woman qualified for the court. And only if you assume before Thurgood Marshall, there were never black people qualified to be on the court, you know what I mean? And before Clarence Thomas, and other

than Clarence Thomas, there aren't any. So I think, but if I take the other perspective is that they're there, but there's just structural and cultural limitations or disorders that prevent them from being identified. Then I don't assume that someone saying explicitly I'm going to find that person or identify that person is coming from a place where that means I'm going to lower my standards in order to to to get some person in a position symbolically that doesn't belong there. And I dealt with that all the time when I went to Penn, that this was at the height of the affirmative action debate. And people were saying that, you know, white students assumed that black students were there because of a quote unquote affirmative action, which to them meant you don't really deserve to be here. You're only here because they wanted you to be here. And I think that's part of the cultural disorder of not understanding the zooming out and seeing, man, if you were to just look at the historical story of educational

limitations of discrimination that was even just rampant and clear, then you would know that there are many people qualified to be here that could be here, but they just, for various cultural reasons, institutional and personal whatever, haven't been able to get there. So that's the assumption when people critique affirmative action is you're lowering the standard to let people in based on their skin color. And that's where they would say, how is that not just reverse racism? What you're saying is we're not...

So you would say if there was a... And I don't know enough about it to know if that's what happens or if that's a myth. So would you say any kind of affirmative action that... Maybe not even use that label. Any kind of standard that we lower the standard

because you assume people of color can't meet that standard, which really is pretty patronizing. That's right. That that isn't good. That we should not – that's not the way to go about it. But rather than open up your eyes to see that – Yeah.

I mean, look. If I got cancer and I needed surgery and I'm like, yeah, I don't want somebody that's not qualified just to meet some quote, like, nah, give me the person that's good. Like give me the whitest, whitest guy who, if that, if that's who it was, but the assumption that oftentimes people have, there was a great skit where, uh, it was a black person that was like, I want a white surgeon because he actually believes like, look, I don't want somebody that just, surgeon because he actually believes like, look, I don't want somebody that just, but I think the, the, the idea that a lot of times the internalized bias that people don't realize. And it's funny because I worked at the admissions office at Penn. So I knew that we had to earmark legacy.

We had to earmark if somebody was from Iowa because they wanted, um, all 50 States represented. So it was easier to get into the school. if you were from Iowa or Idaho, where you're from, if you were from Pennsylvania, where like 30% of the applicants came from. But legacy meant that your parents and grandparents and aunties and uncles went there. And that was something that was taken into account. If you were an athlete, if you, you know, there were all these types of things that were valued out of a sense of wanting a certain kind of diversity. But at the same time, nobody wants people to just go to a school and fail out. And so there was also a real understanding of their academic ability to survive.

That's just cruel to everyone involved. And what I saw time and time again, the people that were around, when I got there, I remember thinking most of the kids that went to my school in the inner city of Philadelphia could have made it here if they were just given, you know, the right opportunities and, you know, and whatnot. It just wasn't as like just one note and overly simplified as it seemed. And so, you know, I think that, again, it's hard to argue for rectifying a problem if people don't see the problem that needs to be rectified. And so that's where all, I mean, again, and one of the major, you asked this question, and this has been a major conversation,

like, okay, I can agree with, obviously, slavery there was institutional racism, or I can agree that segregation was institutional racism in the 60s and 70s, but didn't that get worked out? And like, what does that even mean for right now? And I think, again, that's where the idea of racism as a cultural disorder is helpful, because it's not just institutional, it's not, but it's also personal prejudice, it's also relational, right? It's also just institutional. It's not. But it's also personal prejudice. It's also relational. Right. It's also just the you know, and so the imagination, the stories that we tell. I remember when you look at. So, for example, again, going to football, I guess, because we just, you know, it's why it's the Super Bowl. If you look at the story of Warren Moon, Warren Moon was like the greatest quarterback in college football.

was like the greatest quarterback in college football. He couldn't get drafted as a quarterback because the cultural idea was that black men were not cerebral, smart enough to be quarterbacks. They couldn't read the offenses. They couldn't do the things. And so he ended up playing in Canada, winning like five, six championships in Canada before someone got desperate enough to give this guy a chance. And then he became, you know, he played in the NFL, became a Hall of Fame quarterback there. I am old enough to remember. Now, again, you know, I grew up watching football in the 90s where the running assumption was

that, I don't know, black, you know, men are, you know, can still quarterback right now. Again, it wasn't a legal rule, but it became a big deal when, you know, being from Philly, Donovan McNabb became a quarterback, Randall Cunningham became a quarterback, Michael Vick, because that was an assumption that was built in to the system. And so those stories continued even beyond when you saw this person or that person. And I think that those are indications. So the last thing I would say is, is when in doubt, look at the stats,

like look at, you know, talk to the people in those categories. Like if you want to talk to, you know, a black woman and say, hey, is there discrimination in STEM and science, technology, engineering, you know, mathematics? Go ask them and they hear their stories. They'll tell you, you know what I mean? Look it up, read on the, you know, the both from the, again, housing discrimination, there just was a report I mentioned in our last conversation with Samuel that there was a whole expose done in Long Island, New York that discovered rampant housing discrimination, like not 20 years ago, not 50 years ago, but like five years ago. And so there is a disorder in our

country that definitely we need to address. The Bible, the scriptures, the gospel gives us the insights. And even when it comes to something like restitution, you know, I'm working on a docuseries on Juneteenth. And one of the things that's so fascinating is that, you know, what emancipated slaves, like one of the names they gave to Juneteenth was Jubilee Day. Why did they call it Jubilee Day? Because they looked back in Leviticus and saw the story of Jubilee, the story of how God had created within a structure, both the assumption that, you know what, y'all going to abuse each other. Y'all going to like take advantage of each other when somebody has a shortfall in crops or some type of tragedy that causes them to have to sell their land to this other person.

And so because of that, I'm going to put in the law a system where every 50th year, every debts are covered and you return back to your ancestral lands, and that there's a sense of a reconciliation of society that means that slaves, you know, would be free, and that those who were emancipated tapped into that insight and said, that's what's happening here. The same God who delivered the Israelites from Egypt in bondage and said, I heard their cries. The same God who saw the captives in Babylon and in Persia and raised up, you know, Cyrus and other leaders to bring people back, is the same God that is doing this today in our behalf because He cares about justice. And I think when we start to see those threads, we recognize that, man, we actually have the greatest insights about how to move this thing forward and not shrink back. That jubilee is trippy, man.

I mean that – I've read scholars talk about that saying this is just one of the most countercultural economic things that we see in any – I mean think about what if somebody worked hard and they built a farm and then they bought another farm and then they bought another farm and all of a sudden this guy kind of running away with the land and every 50 years, and he could have been,

he just worked really hard and he was a shrewd businessman and what if he was really honest? He did everything right, but it still goes back to the original so that there are systems of keeping things not uniform, but roughly speaking, equal.

We see the same thing in Nehemiah. If you look at Nehemiah after they come back from exile. So they have essentially come back from being enslaved by Babylon and Persia. And now they're in their own lands and they're enslaving each other. And Nehemiah just goes off on them and says, what are y'all doing? We just got finished buying people back. And now you're putting them in bondage again. And I think the reality is that's the human condition, right? And so when I recognize that I am part of my brokenness and fallenness is a tendency to exploit other people.

And depending on the cultural context that is, I might be exploiting you because of your language and because of your past. This is why nations is so important to see as ethnicity. Race just became a uber meta way globally of organizing people in the same ways that people did, you know, in the Old Testament and in the New Testament. When you look at Scythian or barbarian, when Paul talks about those terms, like barbarian was a negative term, a ethnic slur that Romans used to talk about the peoples that they conquered because they sounded like barbar to them. So barbarian is like saying you sound like you're a babbler, like you don't really speak English because you're not, you know, the elite Romans that speak Latin like us. And so, you know, that's the, so I guess when I, so I'm not, I'm saying we should embrace the fact

of our fallenness and whether it's gender, whether it's our mistreatment of, you know, sexual minorities, whether it's our mistreatment of ethnic or racial minorities, that we need to recognize that this is part of the human condition. And instead of shrinking back or trying to defend ourselves, look into the power of God who said that in Philippians chapter two, have this mind in you that was also in Christ Jesus, who sought the benefits of others over themselves. And when we do that, what we'll find is that we've gained more than we've ever lost. Rasul, I want you to keep going,

but we got to put a bow on this thing. Can you, why don't you end us by just giving a word of challenge or encouragement or one of each to our audience who's listening, saying, man, yes, I'm convinced that this is something that the church Christians need to keep thinking through and pressing into. What do we walk away with this? What do we do? Yeah. I would say, this is a gospel issue because the Bible reveals this thread throughout the Gospels, throughout the Bible

in general. Keep, you know, man, I went through a whole series of study on Psalms, and it was just amazing to me to see how much justice and those themes of justice can, you know, just jump out in the Psalms. And so I think it's there, acknowledge the fact that we have to, It's there. Acknowledge the fact that we have to we have a cultural disorder that we've been raised in that is important for us to deconstruct, dissect and to identify in that. But when we do that. We are on the side of God and living things out in that way. And it's a beautiful thing to behold. And so I would say keep contending for the faith. If you're on a journey where you're still like, I don't necessarily believe these things are true or accurate, I would just say diversify your sources of who you listen to and lean on. That book, Reparations, that I mentioned is a really helpful book by Duke Kwan and Greg Thompson. There's a book, I mean, coming out

called Faithful Anti-Racism by Dr. Christina Edmondson and Chad Brenner. That's going to be incredible. I think Resource to the Body of Christ comes out, I believe, next month. And definitely, you know, check out essays or articles or podcasts. The podcast that I do, Where You're From, is all about having these conversations and leaning into. Where you're from? Yeah. Where you're from? Yes.

Where Y-A from dot O-R-G. And it's an origin story podcast so that we don't we want to start with us getting to know each other's stories so that we can have that as a framework for understand why people lean into the conversations that they have. And so, yeah, definitely check those things out. Thanks, Rasul, man. That's super helpful. Yeah, I'll have you back on maybe in two or three months or something like that if you can give up another hour. I love it because, like I said, I got this Juneteenth docuseries that I'm working on

that'll be out. And I think it's a great resource and, I got this Juneteenth docuseries that I'm working on that will be out. And I think it's a great resource, and I look forward to sharing it with folks. Let's do it right around Juneteenth. We'll pre-record it so it releases around then. That would be perfect. All right. Sounds good. All right.

Take care, Ralph. Yeah, take care. Thank you.