All Episodes

July 14, 2023 35 mins

Ed talks with Pastor, activist, and author Jamal-Harrison Bryant. Bryant is the senior pastor of the mega-church New Birth Missionary Baptist Church outside of Atlanta. They talk about the state of the Black church, celebrate preachers and why political and social activist must do to stay relevant.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Mark as Played
Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Welcome to the latest edition of one hundred The Aed
Gordon Podcast. Today a conversation with pastor, activist and author
Jamal Harrison Bryant. Bryant is the senior pastor of New
Birth Missionary Baptist Church, a megachurch outside of Atlanta. He
was selected to leave the church after the departure and

(00:41):
eventual death of controversial leader Bishop Eddie Law. Bryant first
came to prominence as pastor of Empowerment Temple in Baltimore, Maryland.
He was mentored by many, including the Reverend Jesse Jackson
and Al Sharpton. In their tradition, Bryant has been a
fighter for civil rights, but his path on the church

(01:03):
road was set long before that. His father is Bishop
John Richard Bryant and his mother the Reverend Cecilia Williams Bryant.
They both are prominent in the Ame Church and it
was there we started.

Speaker 2 (01:19):
We hear so much about PK's over the years, but
you got a double dose.

Speaker 3 (01:25):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:25):
Often when we talk about PK's, we talk about somebody's daddy,
but you got it from both ends.

Speaker 3 (01:31):
Yes, I am the epitome of everything associated with a
preacher's kid. I lived up to every narrative, every trope.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
I did it.

Speaker 3 (01:43):
How you live under such a microscope and a fish
tank that you just fight to fight for your identity.
I fight to be a rebel without a cause. So
I went to morehouse, brother, I went crazy.

Speaker 2 (02:05):
I was going to ask that, because you know, when
you're a preacher's kid, there is this sense of having
to take on what your parents or your parent has
chosen very early on. You know, the expectation is far different.
Did it, in fact, you know, impact you in that way?

Speaker 3 (02:26):
Absolutely. There's a reason when President Obama came into the
White House that his first statement to the press is
that children are off limits. Is that this is me
and Michelle, but leave the girls out of it. The
church didn't give us that level of grace. And so
if we weren't singing in the choir, if we were,

(02:49):
how come we ain't doing the solo? You know, if
we ushering the outcome, our gloves not on. And so
living under that sense of accountability that is not ours
is unfair. As a consequence. At embarrassingly, sixty percent of

(03:09):
grown preacher's kids don't go to church. And I heard
something that has haunted me is that preacher's kids feel
like the mistress. They get the time that's left over.

Speaker 2 (03:22):
Yeah, that the church is the favorite child.

Speaker 3 (03:25):
Yes, yes, yes, yes, so living with dad is amazing.
I took my daughter to fam you for the early
college program last two weeks ago, and we were stopped
walking by the campus. Hey, pastor, will you pray for me? Pastor? Well,

(03:48):
you're going to be down here. Frontier story. I took
my daughter into Target, she getting last minute stuff. In
the next hour over, I'm hearing a mother scold and
her daughter saying, did you pack your bible? So the
daughter says, no, I didn't pack my She says, you
see passed a grind in here with his daughter. I

(04:10):
know she packed her bible. I looked at my daughter
with a knowing glance. Had you ain't pack no Bible?
She said, I sure didn't, But I got a Bible
lap on my phone. Does that count? I said that count?
But already, just living in that kind of spaces, it
can be a lot.

Speaker 2 (04:27):
Often preachers kids do one of two things. They run
to the pulpit or they run away from the pulpit. Right,
what was the magnet that ultimately drew you to it?

Speaker 3 (04:40):
When I finished more House, I went to Duke to
be a lawyer. Bernice King four years before I got
out of college, she had created a program at Emery
for law and divinity. I get accepted in the Duke
and I said, Hey, did y'all hear what they did

(05:01):
at Emward? Can we do that same program? They said,
oh sure. I always saw myself in ministry, but I
my mentors was Reverend Jackson, Revend Shopton, so I knew
I was a preacher, but didn't think I was going
to be a pastor. So I thought the street would
be my sanctuary, as it were, And I got in

(05:22):
a real estate law. You know how your eighth grade
teacher tells you you're always gonna need math. I didn't
believe them. There, I said, Lord, I hear the call.
I went across campus withdrew out of the law school
and stayed in Divinity school. But I knew I didn't

(05:44):
want a pastor. I knew it, I mean, down to
my gut. So when I got out of Divinity School,
I was National Youth Director of the NAACP, which is
where I first mentioned under price Infoma. I tell the
story here. People never believe me. We're at our national
convention in Charlotte, and Info May, who is now Congressman,

(06:07):
kis laryngitis. So he asked me to give the State
of the Black America addressed. I'm twenty seven years old.
I give the address. It's the greatest moment of my life.
Next day, I'm on the front page in USA. Today
I get off the stage head and waiting for me

(06:28):
at the bottom of the steps is Dick Gregory. Dick
Gregory grabs me by my collar. I had never met
Dick Gregory a day of my life. I only know
Hi because my parents had records that he is in
our basement. Grabs me by my collar, throws me up
against the wall and says, nicro, that ain't the worthy.

Speaker 2 (06:48):
You, that ain't the worthy.

Speaker 3 (06:51):
He says to me. I'm started, I'm thrown off. I'm
going off in my speech, trying to figure out what
I said that was wrong, he said. Ed when I
was coming up, black people, when they were in trouble
would call on two names, Jesus and the NAACP. He said,
your generation doesn't call on either. Dick Gregory says to me,

(07:14):
young man, you are out of order. You are supposed
to be a pastor. I broke down crying. You know
Dick Gregory as well as I. Dick Gregory didn't go
to church. Leaving church, he didn't have nothing positive to
say about Black pur Chers. And seven months after that

(07:35):
ed is when I started my church in Baltimore. His
was crazy. Dick Gregory came to my first Sunday of
the church that I started. I'm going to give the benediction.
Dick Gregory walks into the pit, takes the microphone and
says this and word is supposed to be in this position,

(08:00):
he says, for my whole career, I'll never forget. He said,
forty years I'm on the stage. We all way sold tickets.
You had to buy tickets before you went in in church.
They let you pay on the way out. Dick Gregory,
for my first Sunday, raised the offering for my service.

(08:20):
I tell people it wasn't my dad, it wasn't Tdjke's,
it wasn't Bishop Charles Blake. It was Dick Gregory that
called me into the pastory. So my journey has been
has been a different one from the door all the
way in.

Speaker 2 (08:38):
Let me ask you this. You you touched on it
throughout that you know. It's interesting because I want to
get into how you see today's church and how young
people especially view it. But what's interesting is you are
a very learned man. But as you and I both know,
for years, particularly in the South, many of the preachers

(09:02):
who held churches did not necessarily certainly didn't go to college,
certainly had not had the opportunities that you were afforded
throughout your life. There's a sense of how preachers were viewed.
But we know all humans are flawed. When you went
into the ministry, did you think about the idea of

(09:25):
what that was going to be. I suspect you couldn't
have known how large the intrusion, quite frankly is until
you did it.

Speaker 3 (09:33):
Yeah, you have to understand megachurches are just a generational them.
Put in context, hip hop is older than megachurches. So
I never saw myself in a new birth. I saw
myself doing well in an ami church somewhere number one,

(09:58):
number two while I went to more House. I never
saw myself pastoring in Georgia. I'm from Baltimore, so I
saw myself Maryland and up so maybe DC, maybe New York,
maybe Philly, And so I had no idea of what
it is that I was walking into, and I assuredly

(10:19):
didn't see myself in this place. You a couple of
weeks ago interviewed and did a story about Bishop James
uh And when I lecture at seminaries, I tell them
that when doctor King went to Montgomery, he was the
youngest pastor in that city. They threw on him the

(10:41):
mantle of leading the Montgomery bus boycott. But he is
an asterisk. That's important is that he had already finished
his doctorate degree. So all of the pastors had in
town said, well, we're gonna call him doctor King. I'm
gonna be So that's how Baptist preachers became doc Fast

(11:05):
forward a generation, Bishop Jakes comes onto the mainstream and
everybody then becomes bishops because he set the standard for that.
When you were growing up, it wasn't no Baptist bishops.

(11:25):
We didn't know Apostolics were regulated to storefront churches, not
on CBS News or Beet or Time magazine, for God's sake,
So it set the trend for it. I'm saying to
it that the education issue was one of two issues.
Either they didn't have any or the preacher and the

(11:47):
teacher were the only educated people in the community. It
was one of those two variables that were at stake.
I am a third generation, not just preacher, but generation seminary,
which is very rare. My grandfather went to paying seminary

(12:08):
after going to Wilberforce, I'm gonna say, in nineteen forty
and so that then changed the trajectory of by family
and how your education.

Speaker 2 (12:18):
Give me a sense of how you see preaching today.
Like everything we all want to be those of us
who have had the spotlight and been deemed celebrity, or
what social media has done, and it's made to a

(12:39):
degree everyone a celebrity. Give me a sense of how
you see your vocation now and this sense of celebrity
preacher which frankly you would be deemed as one.

Speaker 3 (12:53):
Yeah, I think that I'm at a place of Paul's
because you're hearing my and they preaching is a lot
of motivational speeches. There's a lot of the self help
section of Bonds and Noble, not a whole lot of scripture.

(13:13):
And so in a lot of churches they have replaced
Bible study with midweek service. Notice a small little nuance.
I'm now fifty two is that my father, my grandfather
had a study. This generation has an office. Those are

(13:35):
two different things. The office is where I'm doing business.
The study is where I'm doing preparation. And so I
think that in large measure, where in the words of
the Apostle Paul, we're having to be all things to
all people. But you're not hearing and the likes of a.

(13:57):
Jeremiah Wright as calling America into accountability. You're not hearing,
of course, voices hither and Yon. But in large measure,
where was the resounding outside of the Black Church of
the Supreme Court gutting out affirmative action. Where is it

(14:19):
that even for young preachers crying out about where is
affirmative the Supreme Court on canceling the cancelation of student debt.
So it's got to be a mobilization that has to happen.
And we're not just looking to the lives of my
mentor Reverend Shopping, but the young lions, as it were,

(14:41):
I really need to roar, and I'm not hearing that
really reverberate in the community as we have in days
gone by.

Speaker 2 (14:49):
How much of that would you place on the idea
that And again I don't want to paint this brush
for preachers only. But the idea of building one's black brand,
the the idea of building celebrity, that has taken some
of that space. Because I agree with you wholeheartedly that
I think black leadership, and this is my words, not yours,

(15:10):
I think black leadership has failed of late. I think
the Black church has failed of late. I think the
Black community has failed of late of looking at the
things that undergirded us and kept us, you know, standing,
And I think we don't see what we're going to
have to pay for down the line until we figure
out how to fix it. And it will not be

(15:32):
a quick fix.

Speaker 3 (15:34):
Yeah, I don't know if I give them a failing mark.
As much as I'm putting them in summer school, they're
in danger. I am enlivened when I see people like
Corey Bush out of Saint Louis who is coming. I
am reinvigorated when I see Wes Moore out of Maryland

(15:55):
coming through. And so I'm hearing the footsteps of those
who are coming. Of course, we can do more, but
I don't know if we're all together failed. When you
look at our dear sister in Houston, who is sounding
the alarm, taking the mantle from John Conyers about reparations.

(16:16):
So I don't know if it's failing, but I think
that we got to play different uh, and we're playing
checkers while they playing chess. And I think that we've
got to move past symbolic victories and look for what
is the substantive movement. Many years ago, Roland Martin challenged
the Congressional Black Caucus and said, what's the ask? What

(16:38):
are we asking to have happened? If Biden gets another
four years and black women have continuously saved the Democratic Party,
what are we asking? We done? Got a Supreme Court seat, now,
we got a vice presidential seat. Now, but what is
the legislative agenda? And I think that we've got to

(16:58):
put our foot on the game.

Speaker 2 (17:00):
Let me say this before I move on. I would
say that I would continue to give them a failing grade.
There is a difference between failing and failed, and I
think that's the distinction I would make. I would not
suggest to put these people out to pastor. I think
that they, in fact have you know, their their best

(17:24):
efforts and their best want for our community at heart. Yes,
I do not see them as failed, but I do
see them as failing. And I include and I and
I include us in it. In terms of the laymen,
we're all yes, all right, let me get off my soapbox.
We talked, we talked politics. There you at one point

(17:46):
thought about running for Congress. You ultimately suspended your campaign. Yes,
do you still have an inkling? Do you still get
that calling?

Speaker 3 (17:57):
No, that phone number has changed. And I got to
new birth. This is I don't have time to do
anything else at all. I inherited thirty two million dollars
worth of debt and almost ten thousand seats. I got
a film. So my church is a congressional district by itself,

(18:21):
and so I really believe I'm in the place and
in the space where it is that I belong. We've
got a whole lot of Georgians who are really on
the front line doing it. I am proud to be
under the leadership of Raphael Warnot. I am proud to
be under Mayor Andre Dickens. I'm grateful that Stacy Abrams

(18:46):
left a blueprint before going to Howard University of what
it is that we need to do. Their grassroots mobilization
is still effective, and she did it by getting hairs
thrown away from the governor's mansion, and so I feel
that the leadership here in Georgia is really leading.

Speaker 2 (19:06):
Well, let me try this. I've talked to many a
candidate that ultimately ran for the White House. The first
time I asked them, their thought was, oh, no, I
just want to be the best whatever position they were
in at that time. But everybody knew beyond the busyness.
My question is is the burning still there? Though that's

(19:28):
a different that's a different question.

Speaker 3 (19:31):
No, no, no, it is not. Because I am doing
congressional work with a with a congregation. We just and
we're getting ready to break ground on one hundred and
fifty mini homes that I am only letting millennial couples
move in as a standard of going back to a

(19:54):
model of a starter house. If their starter house ain't
going to have a pool, it ain't gonna have no
in laws for you. But stay in here until you
get your legs about you. In October and we're opening
up a holistic health clinic. We are looking at doing

(20:14):
the first of its kind senior housing for seniors who
have custody of their grand children. And so I have
the burden to transform a community, but I'm seeing how
I can do it with this congregation.

Speaker 2 (20:29):
And I would I would suggest that often it's easier
to do it without the shackles that politics brings to you. Yes,
along that lines, you were a part of the profile
that I did on TD Jakes. He has I think
been the best example of how to run a business,

(20:52):
run a church, and keep them separate. The church is
a business in and of itself, but the idea of
two lanes is that something that that you will continue
to grow on. You mentioned the housing here, but how
much it is that template?

Speaker 3 (21:07):
Oh, I'm taking that wholesale. Uh, he's gonna have to
sue me for plagiarism. I got the book and I'm
tearing out every page of it. Uh. No, I think
he is the twenty first century quintessential renaissance man. Anybody
from my generation forward who wants to be relevant in

(21:28):
ministry is going to have to cheat off his paper. Uh,
you're gonna have to see it. I mean, because he's
doing it and doing it so seemingly effortlessly that at
whatever stage that somebody is in ministry, they're gonna have
to double drive.

Speaker 2 (21:47):
How much do you look at the state of the church. Again,
we've touched on this, but the state of today's church,
what do you want to see differently? What do you
what do you think there that the church, the Black
Church is not doing that they should be doing, and
what do you think they're doing and doing well?

Speaker 3 (22:07):
Number one, the synagogues after the pandemic did not rush
to reopen. The mosque, did not rush to reopen the
byhy temple, did not rush to reopen the church did.
Jesus used the word go, the Black Church uses the

(22:30):
word come. Those are two different things. And I think
that the church is going to have to really bolsterter
up the teaching of the congregants of how do I
have a personal life, how do I set up an
altar at home? How do I commune with God when
I can't get the pastor on the phone. And so

(22:52):
we've got to move from membership to discipleship. That's number one.
Number two, I would grew in the pandemic because during
the pandemic I gave one million boxes of groceries. People
were pulling up to our church every Saturday getting groceries.

(23:15):
Food desert everywhere, food shelters out of food everywhere. And
we did it, and churches were People were pulling up
onto our campus saying, are you the pastor so? Yes?
So when y'all open, I'm coming back here. I'm an
eighties baby, eighties church. You've got to have a good choir.

(23:38):
Rep got to be able to say it something for
the kids on Saturday. And now this era is looking
what are you giving back not? How were you not?
How good is your service? How good is your serving? Uh?
And I think that the churches are going to have
to come out of the same glass windows and go

(24:00):
to shrinks, go to street corners. I think the church
is doing well. The church. I want to put a
different language on the brand, and you gave it a failing.
I'm going to say that the church is in puberty.
Our voice is changing. We got acne right now and

(24:22):
the words of my grandmother, we smell like outside. So
we are in a place of culture changes every four years.
Church culture changes every twenty So the average church is
fifteen years behind. So most churches and that you're going
to drive past or go through or visit, they patting

(24:45):
themselves on the back because they are on Facebook. The
kids are left Facebook. So the overwhelming majority of black
churches are not on TikTok, and so to figure out
how do we become relevant and move in that direction.
So I think that what the pandemic did is it

(25:06):
pushed the churches to embrace technology, to even know what
AI is, to make up pastors, I don't know invest
in a ring light. You talked about how now because
of social media, anybody can be a celebrity or influencer. Hey,
fifteen years ago, if you would have interviewed me and

(25:29):
we talked about quote celebrity preachers, those preachers were preachers
who were on TV. Now everybody is a tele evangelist.
I mean because everybody is online. And so there's another
generation who's not on TBN or not on the Word Network,

(25:50):
not on day Star. But they have figured out how
to do reels, They have figured out how to go
on thread. They have figured out how to take quote
from the sermon UH and package it H. And so
I'm excited to see where the church is going with
millennials and Gen x's and now Gen z's who are
coming to the four who are remodeling the church. That

(26:13):
I don't have to wear a road to preach, but
that I can preach in jeans my grandmother would have
had asthma tane. Yes, he saw what I was preaching in.

Speaker 2 (26:24):
What do you tell those who who have not come
up with the reverence that you and I grew up
with for the minister, for the church, for the preacher
who you know, see them as maybe we should have
always seen them as very human, very flawed. The idea
that that, as I mentioned before, the personal life is

(26:45):
out there. It is very humbling. Yes, you know ministers
didn't have to be as humble as they have to
be today years ago. You know you have faced your
own issues and situations. I suspect personally humbling for you. Yes,
what did you learn from those things? And what do
you tell people who may still look at not Jamal

(27:08):
Bryant but paint with the broad brush all who stand
in the pulpit. Yeah, that's hypocritical.

Speaker 3 (27:16):
Yeah, I think it is humbling to know it is
not me. You take no glory for yourself. Roman emperors
when they ran through town on chariots, to keep them humble,
they would have somebody ride in the chariot with them
that while the crowd is screaming and yelling, they would

(27:37):
whisper in their ear you are mortal, you are human.
And I think that pastors have to realize that while
I operate in the sacred and in the supernatural, that
I am human. God has saddled me that my successes

(27:57):
are always the same size of my elder. I'm never
able to get away whatever it is. I got to
own it, or else he gonna lease it wholesale. And
so I think that it is a reverence for the office,
but understanding the God of the office, that my responsibility

(28:19):
is not to win people to me, but to point
people back to God. And I think where people blunder
and where they slip, where they fall is they drink.
They drink the kool aid or the words a Biggie
small day high on their own supply. To know, you
know that it ain't Jamal who's building this church in Atlanta.

(28:41):
Jamal got a ged, Jamal had a baby, Jamal had
a divorce. So people got to look at me through
the prism of my failures and say, Lord, God still
using him. He still got the nerve to speak on
God's behalf. And I think when it is that we

(29:02):
move into that direction, it is not the greatness of
the individual, but the awesomeness of the God we serve.

Speaker 2 (29:10):
Before I let you go, I want to speak on
one of your next projects, which you hope will be
ultimately a huge one behind you as as I have
behind me beautiful art. You and I had a conversation
when we were together just about art and the importance
of it in uh, you know, in history, in our lives,
and what it could and should be to our community.

(29:33):
Talk to me about what you want to do at
the church and what you're what you're putting putting together.

Speaker 3 (29:38):
Thank you. I woke up a couple of months ago
with the epiphany that the modern Black church has replaced
art with led walls. There's no iconography, there is no images,
there are no stories and and no stained glass windows,

(30:00):
and so art has been lost. I read somewhere that
liturgical dancers are the only place in the planet where
there is no diet regimen, where there is no health requirement.

(30:21):
And I think that the art of dance spoken word,
my sister's a spoken word poet, is that we don't
have spoken word artists in church anymore as they were
in the seventies or even in the early eighties, And
so we're curating in our church. Our church, a new
Birth Cathedral in Stonecrest, Georgia with twenty five minutes outside

(30:43):
of Atlanta, is the largest Black land owning church in America.
And I sit with a sanctuary and a gymnasium and
I'm transforming that space. It's a lot of mega churches
are going to need to do in this post pandemic reality,
into a art gallery, which we are hoping will be

(31:06):
the largest Black art gallery in America, second to the Smithsonium.
And so we're bringing Diesporard artists together where we're not
just going to show art, but we're going to encourage
the community that every black family should own a piece
of black art in their home. And so we're hoping

(31:28):
in the next ninety days to open it and set
the standard not just for established artists but for emerging
artists that you come to church not just to worship,
but to understand our culture and a greater depth.

Speaker 2 (31:43):
And in a real sense, it will act as a
gallery slash museum.

Speaker 3 (31:48):
To a guest, Yes, yes, yes, I.

Speaker 2 (31:50):
Have a historic piece. I know you've been over in Africa, Yes,
looking at art there and talking with the artists.

Speaker 3 (31:58):
Yeah. No, it's exciting. So what was typical the bookstore,
yeah that churches have. I will now be a place
where people can get prints as well as they'll be
able to scan the cold in our gallery and we'll
be able to buy it directly from the artists as

(32:19):
well as we will have a section ad for young artists.
I am so proud. Clark Atlanta University is the only
HBCU where you can major in art and it's right
here in Atlanta. So we're going to use their students
as interns and we're going to house some of their

(32:40):
pieces as well as showcase artists who are notable who
will have residency there on our property.

Speaker 2 (32:50):
Well great, we'll look forward to that, man. I am
an art lover, as you know, and we'll look forward
to the curation of you know, all the talent that's
out here.

Speaker 3 (32:59):
We're bringing you back.

Speaker 2 (33:01):
I need your hanging outlet. Well, I told you I'm there.
One other thing before we leave. You told me something
the other day that I didn't even know that I
actually conducted your first national interview. You know, you're so eloquent,
and you know you're an o G now, but this
when you were young. Buck.

Speaker 3 (33:19):
Let me let me help you. It's going to prove
it to you because this advice you gave to me
my first interview BT. You taught me how to sit
on my vents so that my jacket would not rise,
so my jacket wouldn't rise up and buffle over on

(33:41):
my shoulder me years ago and I still hold on
to it. So thank you for giving me my first opportunity.
I was doing a project with the NAACP called Stop
the Low, Stop that, stop the violence, Start Low. So
you brought me in because I, along with Russell Simmons,

(34:03):
was doing the mediation for the East Coast West Coast
rat rat Right. Yeah, that's how far back we go.

Speaker 2 (34:13):
Yeah, man, hey man, always good to see you. Appreciate
that time.

Speaker 3 (34:16):
Man, Thank you for your mentorship, thank you for your leadership,
and thank you for always showing that there is a
higher bar and a greater standard of ebony excellence. I'm
grateful for you.

Speaker 2 (34:27):
I appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (34:32):
Another big thanks to Pastor Bryant.

Speaker 2 (34:34):
If you're ever in the Atlanta area, go check out
his Sunday service and new birth Missionary Baptist Church one
hundred is produced by Ed Gordon Media and distributed by iHeartMedia.
Carol Johnson Green and Shurie Weldon are our bookers. Our
editor is Lance Patton Gerald. Albright composed and performed our theme.

(34:59):
Please join me on Twitter and Instagram at edel Gordon
and on Facebook at ed Gordon Media.

Speaker 3 (35:25):
H
Advertise With Us

Popular Podcasts

Dateline NBC
Stuff You Should Know

Stuff You Should Know

If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.

The Bobby Bones Show

The Bobby Bones Show

Listen to 'The Bobby Bones Show' by downloading the daily full replay.

Music, radio and podcasts, all free. Listen online or download the iHeart App.

Connect

© 2025 iHeartMedia, Inc.