September 29, 2020 • 45 mins
Hillary’s personal faith has been a guiding force throughout her life. In this episode, she is joined by journalist Krista Tippett, social justice activist Reverend William Barber II, and comedian Aasif Mandvi to explore how faith has shaped their public and private lives, and how it can help heal our nation in these difficult times.
Reverend William Barber II is a MacArthur Genius grant-winning minister, author, and activist who organized the Moral Mondays movement in North Carolina and is now Co-Chair of the Poor People’s Campaign. He is also the longtime pastor of Greenleaf Christian Church in Goldsboro, North Carolina. His new book is We Are Called To Be A Movement and is a sermon about how we can all make the change we need.
Krista Tippett is a journalist, author, and host of the Peabody Award-winning weekly national public radio show, On Being, which explores “what it means to be human, and how we want to live.”
Aasif Mandvi is an actor and comedian who has made us laugh as a political correspondent on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart and as the writer and star of the Peabody Award-winning web series Halal in the Family. He currently stars in the CBS show Evil.
A full transcript is here.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You and Me Both is a production of I Heart Radio. Hello,
so good to see you in person, so to speak.
As they said down South, we're glad to be seen
and not viewed. Well, you know, those viewers can be
quite entertaining a lot. Yeah, Well, you know. I went
(00:21):
to one viewing where I don't know exactly what happened,
but a leg shot up. Yeah. She was clearly no
longer of this world, but there was something that caused
that leg to go up. That's right. And I bet
just some league went out the doors and out the
window too. That's right. Help help, that's right. I'm Hillary
(00:51):
Clinton and this is You and Me Both, where I
get into some of today's biggest questions with all kinds
of amazing people. Some of them I've known for years,
others I'm meeting for the first time in front of
this microphone. Today, we're talking about faith. For me, it's
a deeply personal subject, but it's also something that informs
(01:15):
my politics. So I wanted to speak to three people
who are exploring questions of faith in powerful ways. I'm
going to talk with Krista Tippett, longtime host of a
public radio show that I have listened to for years
called on being and I'll also be talking to actor
and comedian as If Manvi, perhaps best known as the
(01:38):
Daily Shows quote Muslim correspondent. And now let's get right
into it with my friend, the Reverend doctor William Barber.
So I am absolutely delighted to welcome the Reverend doctor
William Barber the second. He's not only been a pastor
(02:01):
in North Carolina for a lot of years, but he
became even better known for organizing the Moral Monday Movement.
He serves as president of Repairs of the Breach, one
of my favorite Biblical phrases. He co chairs the Poor
People's Campaign, which is intentionally a reminder of the work
(02:25):
that Dr Martin Luther King Jr. Was doing when he
was murdered. He was awarded, you know, one of those
MacArthur Genius Grant while I was in jail. Can you imagine, Hey, Barbara,
you gotta call But I was in handcuffs, sitting on
(02:48):
the bus byway. Yeah. They started talking on the bus
and said, what well, your life has been one interested
and challenging experience, my friend. But I want to start
really at the beginning. Both of your parents were ministers,
(03:10):
weren't they? And In addition to their faith work, they
helped to desegregate schools in North Carolina. How did your
childhood shape your faith? Well, thank you so much, Secretary Clinton.
And that's my Southern way coming out. You know, we
talked to say, yes, ma'am, Secretary Clinton. I might get
(03:32):
around the same Hillary, But it's just the thing my parents.
My father was a minister, my mother was a minister
of music. She's a concert pianist who's spent a lot
of time training young students. She's still living, just retired
recently from the school she'd be segregated after more than
fifty two years of service. She's a real feisty woman.
(03:55):
She I asked her at after fifty years, why don't
you retire? She said, first all mind your business. And
the second thing is, she said, when I came here,
they didn't want me here. Now I'm gonna stay here
until I feel like leaving. And you know, my parents
accepted a call to come from Indiana back home, my
father's home. They were actually called on by a black
(04:18):
principle who was trying to prepare for desegregation. Now this
was in the mid sixties and schools it's still not
disegregated in eastern North Carolina, so actually we were living
in violation of the law. I was taught that there
was no separation between Jesus and justice. Now, having said
all of that, my father was more progressive than a
(04:40):
lot of people in the church, like Dr King, he
faced some isolation and I decided at an age I
didn't really want to have anything to do with ministry.
I would be in church, but not ministry. I told
my dad, I might be a good deacon, but I
want to reserve the right to tell people just what
I feel. And oosters can't always do that because we
(05:01):
still have the minister. And so I went to school
to be a lawyer, and in my junior year I
received a real sense of calling. And when I told
my father about it, he said, come home, let's talk.
And we went on a four hour drive and just
talking about whether or not I could do better inside
the formal church or outside the former church. And wrestled
(05:26):
through that, and then I preached my trial sermon. Uh
in March of nineteen eighty four. The day I preached
my trial sermons, some people can't and said, oh my goodness,
you're such a great preacher, our church has an opening.
My daddy looked at me and took me home. He said,
you better not even think about it. He said, you're
going to seminary. So I finished my senior year at
North Carolina Central, the student government president and so forth,
(05:48):
and went straight to seminary Duke University Seminary in nineteen
You know, to say that Jesus and justice are the
same thing, it seems to me to be. So this,
I mean, how can you be a Bible reading person,
a church attending person and not understand how profoundly true
(06:12):
that you know simple phrase really is. And yet you've
spent decades now preaching and being an activist. How are
you trying to open up people's minds and hearts to
understand what Christianity should mean and what should be expected
of us who claim to be followers of Jesus. Well,
(06:34):
let's prosecute case a little bit and do a little
little theology and admit, from at least Western culture and
American culture, we have two great problems that have affected
and infected theology in a bad way. Um, and that
is the genocide of First Nation people and the enslavement
(06:57):
of African Americans. That were all rooted in race is
and interestingly enough, the exclusion and oppression of women. Right now.
To do those three things, there had to be a
misinterpretation of scripture, because you're right, if you read the Bible,
there are over two thousand scriptures in the Bible to
(07:17):
talk about how you should do justice, how you should
treat at least things, how you should treat the poor,
the sick, the children, the women, and the immigrant. Jesus
started his ministry to the poor, his public ministry. His
first sermon, the spirit of the lords upon me to
preach good news to the poor. And the word for poor,
that is protacos, is one of three words in Greek.
(07:39):
That word protacos literally means those who have been made
poured through political exploitation. Then, when Jesus is dying or
preparing to die, he said, the nations will be judged
by when I was hunting, when I was sick, when
I was an immigrant, the text I said, did you
welcome me right now? How is it that so many
(08:02):
for a claim then to be quote unquote Christians, but
then have been anti immigrants, anti the freedom of black people,
anti the liberation of women, anti treatment of indigenous people right. Well,
in order to do that, somebody had to twist the scriptures.
So one of my professors said, to be a Christian
(08:23):
to be born again, sprinkled, whatever you call it, and
to claim the Holy Spirit is to have a care
with the world's systems of injustice. And if whatever you
claim you have doesn't produce a choir with injustice, then
your claim of it being the spirit with the big
is suspect. When you think about the very deliberate, concerted
(08:44):
effort by one political party to basically try to own Christianity,
and it overlooks the role of the African American Church,
It overlooks, as you say, a lot of theology, a
lot of history. It also overlooked this moment in time.
You know, black lives matter. I view, as you know,
(09:05):
very profoundly, a theological statement is uh. And when you
think about what's happening in our country right now, do
you see that maybe we are finally going to have
the moral reckoning that has been distorted and perverted and
postponed for so long. M You know, I'm thinking a
lot about that question, because, first of all, historically, you know,
(09:29):
not we had slaveholder religion, but we also had Frederick Douglas,
we had the religion of the slave, we had the
religion of the abolitionist. Let's not forget that the first
people coming together to fight against racism is not new.
You know. Yes, you had the racism in the South,
but alongside that you had Doc King and so many
others who preached the gospel of justice and liberation, so
(09:52):
that we've always had these two streams, if you will now,
I hope so when you say that about this moment
that we're in, and I think it will be a continuation,
because in every age has their emmons. Pettis Bridge right,
every generation has their moment. We've had two reconstructions, one
(10:13):
between eighteen sixty eight and eighteen ninety six, and then
we had the second reconstruction nineteen fifty four to nine eight.
And I think America needs a isn't the third reconstruction?
I think this is the birth pains of it. When
I see all of the organizing, the things that are
happening in climate, the Black Lives Matter, poor People's campaign,
(10:35):
the women's movement that's standing, all of these things coming together.
But in this moment when George Floyd was killed assassinated,
strangle lynched on a sidewalk. That young girl that kept
that camera is the real hero because she forced us
to see it, just like Emmett Tiel's mama forced us
(10:56):
to see his death. Now, the question is, though, is
all that we see in the street just about that
and I see it respectful? I don't think so. The
reason is because that happened also during a time of COVID,
when we have a lot of death going on and
we find out seven or eighty percent of people didn't
have to die if we've done the right thing. On
(11:17):
top of that, we have seven hundred people dying a
day from poverty even before COVID, so there's a lot
of hurt. So I think that when people saw this death,
and they saw it in act that are carried out
by the state, the state is not supposed to kill you.
Life is what the state is supposed to protect. And
when he said I can't breathe, I can't breathe, I
think internally and spiritually a lot of people took that
(11:41):
as shorthand for how all many people of theater, those
workers being forced to go into work in lethal environments
without protection. I can't breathe. People who are dying in
hospitals that shouldn't even be dying one are the problem
of their last words, I can't breathe. And so there's
a sense in which Secretary Clinton at the country that
all this movement in the street and all of this
(12:03):
coming out is like the democracy trying to breathe, establishment
of justice, trying to breathe, provided for the common good,
promoting general effort, trying to breathe, saying something's not right here.
And I think this moment can be a moment where
we come to terms not just with systemic racism as
it affects Black people, but systemic racism and all of
(12:26):
its manifestations against brown people, against First nation people, but
also systemic poverty and ecological devastation, and the war economy,
and the false mold narrative of religious nationalism. This is
a moment. If we don't miss the moment, if we
match our policy decisions to the morning we see in
(12:49):
the street, and if we don't treat this as a
spectacle event rather than recognizing this is a call for reconstruction.
This is a moment that we can fundament the ship.
But it's gonna require a lot of ship. That's gonna
require politicians the ship. It's gonna require people that may
run for office to be moderate, to recognize we're not
(13:09):
in a moderate moment. We're in a reconstruction moment. We're
in an FDR moment. We are not in normal times.
And God help us if we blow this moment. That's
where where I feel about, we're taking a quick break.
Stay with us. How do you see now what the
church should be doing, because a lot of people are
(13:30):
leaving the church. A lot of young people are leaving
the church in part because the way they understand what
Christianity has become is you know, so judgmental, so alienating
that they think to themselves, well, I don't need that.
I don't want to be part of that. So this
should also be a time for the church to take
(13:53):
a hard look at itself and try to figure out
how it can be a real partner in this moment
of more awakening. So there's a book that I when
I studied my doctoral degree at through University, it was
in pastoral care in public pots, and one of the
books I was read said that you do not care
about your people from a pastoral perspective if you are
(14:15):
not willing from a prophetic perspective to challenge the systems
that make them have the problems that need pastoral counseling
in the first place. So in this moment, we have
to stop separating the two. You know, a lot of
young people are leaving so called white evangelical list. And
I was told when we started working with young people,
(14:35):
you know, you're not gonna be able to be a
preacher because they're not. They don't like that. I said, no,
I said, what they don't like is this bland form
of religion that tells them all religion is about is
just praying and wishing for stuff. Young people are very
open to faith that is about transformation, about love, about justice,
(14:58):
about equality, about the essence, the essence of what it
means to be people of faith. And I think we
have to be engaged. There's no way in the days
in which we live, the church can stay quarantined inside
of the four walls, because that's never what it was
intended to do. You know, I've made a pack with
some pastors, for instance, and we've said, if anybody in
(15:19):
our church dies from the lack of healthcare, we're gonna
do just like Emmett Till's money called the media in
and said this is what bad government policy looks like.
And I'm gonna say, how in the world can you
claim to follow Jesus who if he did anything, he
healed everybody free and he never charged the leoper cope.
So how, I mean, really, how how do you claim
(15:46):
to follow? And and I mean it makes absolutely no sense. See,
and I'm moving into poor People's campaign. What's attracting people?
There's three things. The counterintuitiveness of it. People coming together,
cold models from Kentuck get black folk from the delta.
Number two that we are showing the interlocking connection of
the injustice and young folk get this. They love it.
(16:07):
They love the moral fusion when you connect the dots
because they understand that. And then number three'sn't attracting them
is the teaching. Another word I mean by that is
when we go in the room and say did you
know they are hundred and forty million poor lowwell people?
And they said what? And did you know the sixty
or six million? And my wife, did you know about
Joseph Stickley the book The Cost of Any Quality? Say,
(16:29):
remember the cost of any problem, not what does it cost?
To fix it, but what's the cost of leaving it
the same? And we folks start hearing those numbers and
realizing that it doesn't have to be that these are choices,
then they are actually empowering, and they're drawn in because
if it's a chance to do it, then we can unchoose.
(16:49):
I absolutely we can choose something different. You know, this
year has been a tough year for so many of
our fellow Americans. There's so much that has gone wrong,
not only the ravages of the pandemic, but the economic devastation,
the lost jobs and livelihood, some of which are not
(17:10):
going to come back, a terrible sense of just confusion
and loss at the core of our national identity. Would
you just say a few words to all of these
people who are struggling, you know, how can they keep
the faith? How can they regain the faith? How can
(17:33):
they understand that you know, Jesus and justice mean the
same thing, if only we are liberated from a political,
short sided, oppressive religion. And once again, you know, our
fellow seekers, how would you, you know, address those who
(17:54):
are really hurting right now? Well, I think that several things.
Number one is I'm reminded of the words of Frederick
Douglas when the dread Scott decision came down in eighteen
fifties and everybody said it was over. That's it, there's
nothing we can do. Slavers is going to be what
it is. And he was invited to speak to a
(18:15):
women's group in May and Frederick Douglas said, this decision
is monstrous in all of its considerations. But you need
to know that every attempt to alie our movement as
only served to embolden and intensify agitation. And what at
(18:38):
this moment of pain is unnecessary link in the breaking
of the change of oppression. I think we have to
remember that people have come through some very very despairing
situations before. And when people ask me about optimistic, no
and my hope for yes, but it's the hope that
has to come through the despair. I think the third
(18:59):
thing is to recognize that a lot of what we're seeing,
even with COVID, is not God made, is human ineptitude.
And if humans, as James Balbin said, messed it up
our path phrase, then then we can fix it. The
next thing is remember in history that it was after
the swine flue, after all that pain that track LA
(19:24):
down the roads that in the new deal that isn't
after after this. So I say the fourth in this moment,
don't give up, Join up, Join the movement, Join LA
the four Things campaign. Because every time people have come
together in the most difficult moments, whether it was Frederick Douglas,
Harriet Tubman, Lucretia Mott, the coming together, they were able
(19:45):
to fundamentally shift the direction of history. History is not set.
We can affect history. Is it hard? Yes, it is
gonna be childing. Yes. So some of us have decided
to say this claim that if if right now, in
this moment, but than forty eight hours, any one of
us could be on a ventilator breathing our last breath,
if that's the possibility in this moment, then what are
(20:07):
we gonna do with it? Well, one of the things
we can do with it is say, if I knew
I only had two days to breathe, what kind of
world would I fight for with my last breath? What
kind of love, what kind of greats? What kind of truth?
And then start living like that all of us we
might live forty eight more years, But in this meantime,
and I do mean meantime, in this means right that
(20:29):
we decide that we are not going to join with
the meanings, that we're going to use our last breath
and everything we have, our activism, our voting, our conversation,
our building community, because I don't have any breath to waste.
And if I'm going to honor the people who have
died and lost their breath, then the only way I
(20:49):
can honor them is to use the breath. I have
to fight for a better world that would not have
cost them their life. And I think if we do that,
we can, in fact, you out of this great moment
of despause King was, says Stone of hope. We can
be repairs of the breach. We really can be repasitive breach,
and we can be a movement. Now it's going to
(21:10):
mean we must push, push, and sometimes that's gonna mean
your friends. I'm not gonna like it necessarily, but it's
better to be pushed by our friend to be made better.
Black and white and brown and red and yellow and
gay and straight. It trans whoever we are. We are
this movement, and the last thing we can do is
(21:32):
just that Cat, you are a man after my own heart,
my friend. Yeah, I mean, that's how I feel every day,
and I cannot tell you how much I have loved
having this conversation with you. And for those who have
listened who want to hear more from Reverend Dr William Barber.
(21:52):
His sermons at his church are stream live on Facebook,
but there are so many other ways you can find him,
his writings, his speaking, his incredible work of purpose and
mission on behalf of forming, as our mutual friend John
Lewis would say, a beloved community, a community in America
that finally lives up to our our values and our faith.
(22:17):
Thank you so much, my friend. It's wonderful having this
chance to talk with you, and I look forward to
continuing the conversation. Thank you so much. If you're looking
for more wisdom from Reverend Barber, pick up a copy
of his new book, We Are Called to Be a Movement.
(22:40):
Nearly two decades ago, Christa Tippett recognized that most Americans
have a hard time talking about religion and spirituality outside
of places of worship. So she started a conversation that
continues to this day, not only with religious leaders, but
with everyone from poets to physicists. I am so excited
to dig into this topic with her. It's just a
(23:04):
sheer delight to have this chance to talk with you. Christa, Well,
it's an honor and really a delight to be here.
I particularly resonate to a saying of your describing your
own work that I read, where you seek to address
what you call a black hole where intelligent public conversation
(23:26):
about the religious, spiritual, and moral aspects of human life
might be. Krista talked to me about how you see
this present time. Are we filling the black hole? Are
we ignoring it? Uh? Where is the opportunity for what
(23:48):
I think is a much needed spiritual reckoning um about
what it means to be human and trying to be
more focused in how we live the life we are given,
both alone and in company. Yeah, well, I do agree
(24:11):
with you that as I've watched this moment, I feel
that it has brought into relief. It has surfaced that
the questions before us have deep moral content and and
in fact are about, you know, the soul of our nation.
(24:33):
And we still have to develop the muscles and the
language and the practices public practices to take those things
on together. But I think more of us are aware
that that's what we're called to do um, and theology
does have a contribution to make as part of the
human enterprise. Um. What does it mean to be human?
(24:57):
How do we want to live? And who will we
be to to each other? Those questions are so alive
in our life together right now, between our pandemic and
our racial rupture and awakening. I mean, I am really
turning now to words and practices that I feel again,
(25:22):
like I would say, have to are offered up to
all of us as part of the human enterfries of contemplation,
of repentance, of redemption, of healing, of I was talking
to some rabbis the other day about lamentations, right like
in that tradition that lamentations is supposed to be a
public practice. And I don't know about you, but that
(25:44):
word I land so um with relief in me. I
want to lament. I need to lament, and I want
to lament with others. And instead we're just so good
at all the other We leap over lament and we
point fingers and we blame and we yell and we
get mad. And there are these other places in us
(26:06):
that these traditions are the bearers are not the only bears,
but I feel like they are great resources and companions
for now. I wish there were a way as we
think about the time we're living through right now, and
how necessary it is for people to slow down, to
(26:29):
take a deep breath, to think about their lives and
the lives of those around them too, maybe explore some
of the spiritual and religious practices and the and the
and the great questions that haven't gone away just because
we don't address them. I'm with you, I you know,
my quick definition of spiritual life is befriending reality. Mm hmm,
(26:55):
unpacked that for us, unpacked that that's great to be
friend reality, which means all its complexity. Right, we are
all so complicated and our life together is so complicated,
and all of these challenges that we face are so complicated.
But resisting that complexity doesn't get us where we want
(27:17):
to go. And I think when I say that befriending
reality also, what I mean by that is that these
traditions Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, they contain not just
conversation and wisdom across time and generations about who God
might be or what transcendence is, but this matter of
(27:38):
being human, the complexity of being human, and so much
of what the traditions have taught and cultivated is now
being worn out in our disciplines of neuroscience and social psychology. So,
you know, one of the things we're learning is the
corrosive effect that fear has. When human beings are afraid,
(28:05):
we are literally unable to rise to our best selves. Right,
it's literally too much to ask of somebody's The system
is overwhelmed. Yeah, I can't do it. If you feel threatened,
the feeling of threatened is enough. You may not actually
be in danger. So that's reality. And so the pragmatism
of these spiritual tools and practices and teachings is that
(28:28):
it gives us the power to settle into our best selves,
this move of not letting fear dominate, a finding ways
to control that in ourselves, to step into our best selves,
to transmit to others that that is possible, to move
through the world that way. We cannot face the challenges
(28:50):
before us. We cannot face how we have distorted ourselves
with this construction of race. Right, I mean to name
just one of the things that is before us, which
which which kind of under has underpinned so many of
the others. If we don't find ways to rise into
the best and deepest and most complex aspects of our
(29:14):
humanity and character, our moral imagination. Oh, I feel literally
thrilled by that phrase befriending reality and your description of
what it means, what it could mean. That really is
just truly music to my ears. Christa. We'll be back
(29:35):
right after this quick break, you know, I will say,
since I'm here with you, I know and I've known this,
but I hear it in your voice, even even though
you're mostly just asking questions now. But I I know
that this is a huge part of you, the tradition
you grew up in, that there is a religious and
(29:58):
and spiritual funding to your life that I assume has
evolved because I think if if this part of life
like anything, if if you're alive, it's evolving, and you
have had an adventurous life, and um, I just think
it must have been I have thought this before. It
must have been frustrating for this, even this part of
(30:20):
yourself to not be able to show because as we
talked about, there's not a place where the complexity and
richness and fullness of this part of us, it gets
honored and has a place to show itself. I don't
know if that's a question, but well, no, but I
take it as a question because it's one that I've
(30:41):
thought about a lot. Um. I was raised as a Methodist.
I was raised, uh, you know, going to Sunday School.
I had a really influential youth minister who took us
to a different level of thinking about why and and
what it meant to be a Christian, what it meant
(31:03):
to be a person of faith. Uh. He was the
one who took me, as a young teenager to hear
Dr Martin Luther King Jr. Speak um. And he was
constantly challenging us, uh with art and poetry and different
ways of thinking about the world than the ones we
had grown up with in our suburb of Chicago. And
(31:26):
so I always believed that faith was a constant in
my life. You might hear the rain beating on the
top of the roof of my my little, my little
attic office where I am recording this, which seems kind
of appropriate. Um, But it was really difficult to ever
(31:49):
express any of these feelings or experiences, or even the
questions raised by my own faith in my own upbringing
in my own searching in my public life. For example,
when my father died, I had given, you know, several
weeks of my time by his bedside as as he
(32:13):
passed away, and I was just totally overwhelmed by what
we all experienced, that the death of a loved one.
And I had promised to speak at the University of
Texas before my father's stroke, and I was trying to
get out of it. And the indomitable was Carpenter who
(32:37):
had asked me to deliver the speech, and no, no, Hill,
are you got to come? You know, we filled the
field house tens of thousands of people. You have to come. Well,
I had no idea what I was going to say.
I didn't feel up to the occasion, but you know,
I'm a dutiful Methodist person, and so of course I went.
And it was an incredibly emotional experience for me. And
(33:01):
I talked about meaning and life and I remember just
being ridiculed by the press. Um, what right did I
have to raise these issues in public? What was a
quote first lady doing talking about issues of life and
death and meaning and spirituality. It was a very very
(33:25):
difficult um time in my life. And two feel that
I had no public outlet for exploring these issues meant
that I just became more personal, and so that was
kind of you you then decided you needed to keep
that in Yeah, and it's it in terms of a
(33:47):
personal experience, it certainly has continued. But I have felt
often that, you know, maybe if I could think of
a better way of talking about it, a more oh
understandable and acceptable way, I might possibly make a better impact.
But you know, I feel very fortunate that I've had
(34:11):
this grounding in faith, not just emotionally but intellectually. Because
I have, I have fallen back on it, you know,
time and time again. So it's it's it's challenging. If
you're in the public eye and known for being in
the public eye as a political person, there's an acceptable
(34:34):
range to talk about religion. Uh, but if you go
into these deeper questions, the press and and and certain
elements of the public get immediately anxious about it. Yeah.
We just we don't have that, We don't have the vocabulary.
I mean, I don't and and and don't think it's
somehow appropriate to have right conversation in public, like don't
(34:56):
talk about this in public for having's sakes. Yeah. I
also think that word you use searching the crazy thing
is that the religion that does get somehow sanctioned. It's
the certainty, right, it's this, it's the doctrinaire. Yes, and
that's actually not how people live this. I like you
(35:18):
just you described it's been, it's your it's somebody dies.
It's like these moments in life where it doesn't all
add up and and and nothing else is there. This
is where we are turned into our interior existence and
these questions of meaning. That makes so much sense what
you just said. And and if it's painful to me
(35:39):
from before, it's painful to hear about, well, thank you
again for spending this time with me. Thank you. You
can hear Christo Tippett every week tune into On Being
from Minnesota Public Radio and pr X. I want to
(36:03):
turn now to someone else who has shed new light
on the issue of faith, in his case through humor. Christianity.
It's the dominant religion in our country. But did you
know it's also in serious trouble. No, it's not gays,
not science, not the rual Hollywood. According to Alabama, it's
sharia law. Assif monv is perhaps best known for his
(36:27):
role as the Daily shows senior Muslim correspondent, or alternatively,
the senior foreign looking correspondent. He was also the lead
actor and co writer and producer of the web series
Halal in the Family. What a great name, they say,
if you want to make people think, try making them laugh.
And that's exactly what Ossif does, all while confronting racisms
(36:52):
and a phobia, Islamophobia and bigotry. And then there's the
latest development this past march, Assip became a dad, and
of course I wanted to hear all about that. So
before we get started on all this other stuff, what's
your son's name? His name is is Sean a mere Mandvi.
(37:13):
My wife is Hindu and I'm Muslim. So we uh,
Sean is a Hindu name, Amir is Muslim and his
initials are i am, which is uh, you know, Jewish. Yeah, yeah, wait,
So we got all the bases covered, you know, walking
advertisement exactly, major religions exactly. It was. It was actually
(37:40):
amazing because we had an interfaith wedding, Hindu Muslim wedding,
and uh, we have to make it up because you know,
there's a world in which Chifali and I would never
have gotten married, you know, that's right. And how did
you grow up? I mean, I know you spent part
of your childhood in the UK, then your family moved
(38:01):
to Florida. How did it feel to you growing up
Muslim in those two settings. Well, you know, I did
grow up Muslim, and I grew up in a relatively
religious home. My grandparents were religious, you know, so Islam
was always just part of the d n a of
my childhood. You know, maybe not ironically, but interestingly. It
(38:23):
didn't really become a thing until after nine eleven. You know,
up until then, I had this religion that felt very private,
and it felt like it was my thing that I
did with my family. We went to the mosque, sometimes,
we prayed at home, you know, we went to religious
ceremonies of things. But it never became something that was
(38:43):
looked on from the outside until after night eleven. And
then suddenly there was a different relationship to it, and
suddenly I was dealing with the explanation of it or
having to somehow defend it or somehow, you know, Islam
became politicized. But growing up, it just felt like it
(39:04):
was a very personal, private thing, and I used it
as my own way of connecting with whatever highest spirit,
you know, gone universe, whatever that is. When you think
about politicizing religion and then the Islamophobia that resulted after
(39:25):
nine eleven, you have been one of the very few
high profile people who have walked right into that. Uh you,
and I want to I want to understand your thinking
about it, because you know, I'm sure that there were
people who said, you know, don't go there, you know,
don't don't make it an issue. How did you come
(39:45):
to grips with what you wanted to do to try to,
you know, in your own way, combat what you saw
as the politicization and the really demonization in so many
different more of Islam. Well, you know it's funny because
I was, well, this is gonna Sometimes life just happens
(40:06):
to you, and what you do in that moment defines
what happens in the next moment. And for me what happened.
I wasn't trying to be political. I wasn't trying to
like be outspoken about it, even after nine eleven. Um.
I was dealing with it on a personal level, but
never in a public forum. And then the Daily Show
(40:27):
happened for me. I got this job that I never
expected to get. I never was I wasn't looking for it.
It literally happened. I went, I went to this audition,
John Stewart hired me, and suddenly I was now the
Muslim correspondent on the Daily Show, much to the terror
of my parents, who I remember saying, my dad saying
(40:50):
to me, listen, if John Stewart ever asked you anything
about Islam, you just haven't called your mother because you
don't know a damn thing, and so like so they
were terrified, and I was gonna be out there like
just you know, saying all kinds of nonsense that didn't
make any and then I what it did for me
(41:10):
was it gave me this platform. And at that time,
in two thousand and six, there were not a lot
of a lot of people representing in that way that
felt like it was truthful. I mean, you had, like,
you know, the terrorists on twenty four or you know,
I mean, I got so many scripts in the aftermath
of nine eleven where it was literally the first scene
(41:31):
of the movie or the TV show is the towers
coming down and and Muslims cheering and praying every script.
And so this was the first time there was something
where like I thought, oh, this is a an actual conversation,
like we're actually talking about this. And I think that
when I got on the Daily Show, I ended up
(41:52):
there and I thought to myself, Okay, this is what
I'm gonna end up being. And I realized like, oh,
there was a need for it. So I leaned into it,
and then I found a voice around it. Then as
I stepped into it further and further, I realized, oh,
this is I'm actually finding a voice that I had
(42:16):
not allowed myself to find. So sometimes it's just about
being given the opportunity to express that. And then you
realize like, I got a lot to say, you know,
I didn't know that I had this much to say
around this. Yeah, and let let me sort of bring
this back to both faith but also fatherhood. So here
you are a new father, um, thinking about all that's
(42:41):
going on in the world around you. How do you
hope the world looks you know, in five years when
he starts school, in eighteen years when he graduates from
high school, and how do you see how raising your
son at this moment is going to play out? Well,
(43:02):
I feel I I do believe, And then and you know,
maybe This is the glass half full guy in me,
which is that I do believe that after a breakdown,
there is a breakthrough, and if we're going through some
kind of sort of profound breakdown, there is going to
be a moment a breakthrough. And I also believe something
that I discovered recently, which is the difference for me
(43:23):
between faith and belief, you know, and belief is I
believe something is going to happen. I believe that I'm
gonna get that job, or I believe that I'm gonna,
you know, be whatever it is. Faith is understanding that
no matter what happens, I have the capacity to move
forward and to be okay. And that is something that
(43:48):
I feel like I want my son to understand. It's
a it's a much more difficult thing to inhabit, which
is this idea that like I'm going to be and
we will be okay no matter why what happens, and
that is faith and that that we cannot be destroyed
because faith is larger than that version. You know. Yes,
(44:08):
I love that, and I'm with you in hoping that
you know, this breakdown leads through a breakthrough. Yeah, but
I just can't thank you enough. I loved love talking
to you. I just wish the best for you and
your wife and your son. Thank you so much. This
has been such a pleasure. Thanks so much. When he's
(44:30):
not changing diapers, Ossip Munby has his hands and many
new projects, including a highly entertaining new supernatural drama series
called Evil on CBS. Check it out. You and Me
Both is brought to you by I Heart Radio. We're
produced by Julie Subran and Kathleen Russo, with help from
(44:52):
Huma Aberdeen, Nikki etur Oscar Flores, Brianna Johnson, Nick Merrill,
Lauren Peterson, Rob Russo, and Lona Valmorrow. Our engineer is
Zach McNeice. Original music is by Forest Gray. If you
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(45:12):
Tell a friend. You can subscribe to You and Me
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for future shows at You and Me Both pod at
(45:33):
gmail dot com. Come back next week when we're talking
to some amazing women leaders, including the one and only
Gloria steinhum
You and Me Both is a production of I Heart Radio. Hello,
so good to see you in person, so to speak.
As they said down South, we're glad to be seen
and not viewed. Well, you know, those viewers can be
quite entertaining a lot. Yeah, Well, you know. I went
(00:21):
to one viewing where I don't know exactly what happened,
but a leg shot up. Yeah. She was clearly no
longer of this world, but there was something that caused
that leg to go up. That's right. And I bet
just some league went out the doors and out the
window too. That's right. Help help, that's right. I'm Hillary
(00:51):
Clinton and this is You and Me Both, where I
get into some of today's biggest questions with all kinds
of amazing people. Some of them I've known for years,
others I'm meeting for the first time in front of
this microphone. Today, we're talking about faith. For me, it's
a deeply personal subject, but it's also something that informs
(01:15):
my politics. So I wanted to speak to three people
who are exploring questions of faith in powerful ways. I'm
going to talk with Krista Tippett, longtime host of a
public radio show that I have listened to for years
called on being and I'll also be talking to actor
and comedian as If Manvi, perhaps best known as the
(01:38):
Daily Shows quote Muslim correspondent. And now let's get right
into it with my friend, the Reverend doctor William Barber.
So I am absolutely delighted to welcome the Reverend doctor
William Barber the second. He's not only been a pastor
(02:01):
in North Carolina for a lot of years, but he
became even better known for organizing the Moral Monday Movement.
He serves as president of Repairs of the Breach, one
of my favorite Biblical phrases. He co chairs the Poor
People's Campaign, which is intentionally a reminder of the work
(02:25):
that Dr Martin Luther King Jr. Was doing when he
was murdered. He was awarded, you know, one of those
MacArthur Genius Grant while I was in jail. Can you imagine, Hey, Barbara,
you gotta call But I was in handcuffs, sitting on
(02:48):
the bus byway. Yeah. They started talking on the bus
and said, what well, your life has been one interested
and challenging experience, my friend. But I want to start
really at the beginning. Both of your parents were ministers,
(03:10):
weren't they? And In addition to their faith work, they
helped to desegregate schools in North Carolina. How did your
childhood shape your faith? Well, thank you so much, Secretary Clinton.
And that's my Southern way coming out. You know, we
talked to say, yes, ma'am, Secretary Clinton. I might get
(03:32):
around the same Hillary, But it's just the thing my parents.
My father was a minister, my mother was a minister
of music. She's a concert pianist who's spent a lot
of time training young students. She's still living, just retired
recently from the school she'd be segregated after more than
fifty two years of service. She's a real feisty woman.
(03:55):
She I asked her at after fifty years, why don't
you retire? She said, first all mind your business. And
the second thing is, she said, when I came here,
they didn't want me here. Now I'm gonna stay here
until I feel like leaving. And you know, my parents
accepted a call to come from Indiana back home, my
father's home. They were actually called on by a black
(04:18):
principle who was trying to prepare for desegregation. Now this
was in the mid sixties and schools it's still not
disegregated in eastern North Carolina, so actually we were living
in violation of the law. I was taught that there
was no separation between Jesus and justice. Now, having said
all of that, my father was more progressive than a
(04:40):
lot of people in the church, like Dr King, he
faced some isolation and I decided at an age I
didn't really want to have anything to do with ministry.
I would be in church, but not ministry. I told
my dad, I might be a good deacon, but I
want to reserve the right to tell people just what
I feel. And oosters can't always do that because we
(05:01):
still have the minister. And so I went to school
to be a lawyer, and in my junior year I
received a real sense of calling. And when I told
my father about it, he said, come home, let's talk.
And we went on a four hour drive and just
talking about whether or not I could do better inside
the formal church or outside the former church. And wrestled
(05:26):
through that, and then I preached my trial sermon. Uh
in March of nineteen eighty four. The day I preached
my trial sermons, some people can't and said, oh my goodness,
you're such a great preacher, our church has an opening.
My daddy looked at me and took me home. He said,
you better not even think about it. He said, you're
going to seminary. So I finished my senior year at
North Carolina Central, the student government president and so forth,
(05:48):
and went straight to seminary Duke University Seminary in nineteen
You know, to say that Jesus and justice are the
same thing, it seems to me to be. So this,
I mean, how can you be a Bible reading person,
a church attending person and not understand how profoundly true
(06:12):
that you know simple phrase really is. And yet you've
spent decades now preaching and being an activist. How are
you trying to open up people's minds and hearts to
understand what Christianity should mean and what should be expected
of us who claim to be followers of Jesus. Well,
(06:34):
let's prosecute case a little bit and do a little
little theology and admit, from at least Western culture and
American culture, we have two great problems that have affected
and infected theology in a bad way. Um, and that
is the genocide of First Nation people and the enslavement
(06:57):
of African Americans. That were all rooted in race is
and interestingly enough, the exclusion and oppression of women. Right now.
To do those three things, there had to be a
misinterpretation of scripture, because you're right, if you read the Bible,
there are over two thousand scriptures in the Bible to
(07:17):
talk about how you should do justice, how you should
treat at least things, how you should treat the poor,
the sick, the children, the women, and the immigrant. Jesus
started his ministry to the poor, his public ministry. His
first sermon, the spirit of the lords upon me to
preach good news to the poor. And the word for poor,
that is protacos, is one of three words in Greek.
(07:39):
That word protacos literally means those who have been made
poured through political exploitation. Then, when Jesus is dying or
preparing to die, he said, the nations will be judged
by when I was hunting, when I was sick, when
I was an immigrant, the text I said, did you
welcome me right now? How is it that so many
(08:02):
for a claim then to be quote unquote Christians, but
then have been anti immigrants, anti the freedom of black people,
anti the liberation of women, anti treatment of indigenous people right. Well,
in order to do that, somebody had to twist the scriptures.
So one of my professors said, to be a Christian
(08:23):
to be born again, sprinkled, whatever you call it, and
to claim the Holy Spirit is to have a care
with the world's systems of injustice. And if whatever you
claim you have doesn't produce a choir with injustice, then
your claim of it being the spirit with the big
is suspect. When you think about the very deliberate, concerted
(08:44):
effort by one political party to basically try to own Christianity,
and it overlooks the role of the African American Church,
It overlooks, as you say, a lot of theology, a
lot of history. It also overlooked this moment in time.
You know, black lives matter. I view, as you know,
(09:05):
very profoundly, a theological statement is uh. And when you
think about what's happening in our country right now, do
you see that maybe we are finally going to have
the moral reckoning that has been distorted and perverted and
postponed for so long. M You know, I'm thinking a
lot about that question, because, first of all, historically, you know,
(09:29):
not we had slaveholder religion, but we also had Frederick Douglas,
we had the religion of the slave, we had the
religion of the abolitionist. Let's not forget that the first
people coming together to fight against racism is not new.
You know. Yes, you had the racism in the South,
but alongside that you had Doc King and so many
others who preached the gospel of justice and liberation, so
(09:52):
that we've always had these two streams, if you will now,
I hope so when you say that about this moment
that we're in, and I think it will be a continuation,
because in every age has their emmons. Pettis Bridge right,
every generation has their moment. We've had two reconstructions, one
(10:13):
between eighteen sixty eight and eighteen ninety six, and then
we had the second reconstruction nineteen fifty four to nine eight.
And I think America needs a isn't the third reconstruction?
I think this is the birth pains of it. When
I see all of the organizing, the things that are
happening in climate, the Black Lives Matter, poor People's campaign,
(10:35):
the women's movement that's standing, all of these things coming together.
But in this moment when George Floyd was killed assassinated,
strangle lynched on a sidewalk. That young girl that kept
that camera is the real hero because she forced us
to see it, just like Emmett Tiel's mama forced us
(10:56):
to see his death. Now, the question is, though, is
all that we see in the street just about that
and I see it respectful? I don't think so. The
reason is because that happened also during a time of COVID,
when we have a lot of death going on and
we find out seven or eighty percent of people didn't
have to die if we've done the right thing. On
(11:17):
top of that, we have seven hundred people dying a
day from poverty even before COVID, so there's a lot
of hurt. So I think that when people saw this death,
and they saw it in act that are carried out
by the state, the state is not supposed to kill you.
Life is what the state is supposed to protect. And
when he said I can't breathe, I can't breathe, I
think internally and spiritually a lot of people took that
(11:41):
as shorthand for how all many people of theater, those
workers being forced to go into work in lethal environments
without protection. I can't breathe. People who are dying in
hospitals that shouldn't even be dying one are the problem
of their last words, I can't breathe. And so there's
a sense in which Secretary Clinton at the country that
all this movement in the street and all of this
(12:03):
coming out is like the democracy trying to breathe, establishment
of justice, trying to breathe, provided for the common good,
promoting general effort, trying to breathe, saying something's not right here.
And I think this moment can be a moment where
we come to terms not just with systemic racism as
it affects Black people, but systemic racism and all of
(12:26):
its manifestations against brown people, against First nation people, but
also systemic poverty and ecological devastation, and the war economy,
and the false mold narrative of religious nationalism. This is
a moment. If we don't miss the moment, if we
match our policy decisions to the morning we see in
(12:49):
the street, and if we don't treat this as a
spectacle event rather than recognizing this is a call for reconstruction.
This is a moment that we can fundament the ship.
But it's gonna require a lot of ship. That's gonna
require politicians the ship. It's gonna require people that may
run for office to be moderate, to recognize we're not
(13:09):
in a moderate moment. We're in a reconstruction moment. We're
in an FDR moment. We are not in normal times.
And God help us if we blow this moment. That's
where where I feel about, we're taking a quick break.
Stay with us. How do you see now what the
church should be doing, because a lot of people are
(13:30):
leaving the church. A lot of young people are leaving
the church in part because the way they understand what
Christianity has become is you know, so judgmental, so alienating
that they think to themselves, well, I don't need that.
I don't want to be part of that. So this
should also be a time for the church to take
(13:53):
a hard look at itself and try to figure out
how it can be a real partner in this moment
of more awakening. So there's a book that I when
I studied my doctoral degree at through University, it was
in pastoral care in public pots, and one of the
books I was read said that you do not care
about your people from a pastoral perspective if you are
(14:15):
not willing from a prophetic perspective to challenge the systems
that make them have the problems that need pastoral counseling
in the first place. So in this moment, we have
to stop separating the two. You know, a lot of
young people are leaving so called white evangelical list. And
I was told when we started working with young people,
(14:35):
you know, you're not gonna be able to be a
preacher because they're not. They don't like that. I said, no,
I said, what they don't like is this bland form
of religion that tells them all religion is about is
just praying and wishing for stuff. Young people are very
open to faith that is about transformation, about love, about justice,
(14:58):
about equality, about the essence, the essence of what it
means to be people of faith. And I think we
have to be engaged. There's no way in the days
in which we live, the church can stay quarantined inside
of the four walls, because that's never what it was
intended to do. You know, I've made a pack with
some pastors, for instance, and we've said, if anybody in
(15:19):
our church dies from the lack of healthcare, we're gonna
do just like Emmett Till's money called the media in
and said this is what bad government policy looks like.
And I'm gonna say, how in the world can you
claim to follow Jesus who if he did anything, he
healed everybody free and he never charged the leoper cope.
So how, I mean, really, how how do you claim
(15:46):
to follow? And and I mean it makes absolutely no sense. See,
and I'm moving into poor People's campaign. What's attracting people?
There's three things. The counterintuitiveness of it. People coming together,
cold models from Kentuck get black folk from the delta.
Number two that we are showing the interlocking connection of
the injustice and young folk get this. They love it.
(16:07):
They love the moral fusion when you connect the dots
because they understand that. And then number three'sn't attracting them
is the teaching. Another word I mean by that is
when we go in the room and say did you
know they are hundred and forty million poor lowwell people?
And they said what? And did you know the sixty
or six million? And my wife, did you know about
Joseph Stickley the book The Cost of Any Quality? Say,
(16:29):
remember the cost of any problem, not what does it cost?
To fix it, but what's the cost of leaving it
the same? And we folks start hearing those numbers and
realizing that it doesn't have to be that these are choices,
then they are actually empowering, and they're drawn in because
if it's a chance to do it, then we can unchoose.
(16:49):
I absolutely we can choose something different. You know, this
year has been a tough year for so many of
our fellow Americans. There's so much that has gone wrong,
not only the ravages of the pandemic, but the economic devastation,
the lost jobs and livelihood, some of which are not
(17:10):
going to come back, a terrible sense of just confusion
and loss at the core of our national identity. Would
you just say a few words to all of these
people who are struggling, you know, how can they keep
the faith? How can they regain the faith? How can
(17:33):
they understand that you know, Jesus and justice mean the
same thing, if only we are liberated from a political,
short sided, oppressive religion. And once again, you know, our
fellow seekers, how would you, you know, address those who
(17:54):
are really hurting right now? Well, I think that several things.
Number one is I'm reminded of the words of Frederick
Douglas when the dread Scott decision came down in eighteen
fifties and everybody said it was over. That's it, there's
nothing we can do. Slavers is going to be what
it is. And he was invited to speak to a
(18:15):
women's group in May and Frederick Douglas said, this decision
is monstrous in all of its considerations. But you need
to know that every attempt to alie our movement as
only served to embolden and intensify agitation. And what at
(18:38):
this moment of pain is unnecessary link in the breaking
of the change of oppression. I think we have to
remember that people have come through some very very despairing
situations before. And when people ask me about optimistic, no
and my hope for yes, but it's the hope that
has to come through the despair. I think the third
(18:59):
thing is to recognize that a lot of what we're seeing,
even with COVID, is not God made, is human ineptitude.
And if humans, as James Balbin said, messed it up
our path phrase, then then we can fix it. The
next thing is remember in history that it was after
the swine flue, after all that pain that track LA
(19:24):
down the roads that in the new deal that isn't
after after this. So I say the fourth in this moment,
don't give up, Join up, Join the movement, Join LA
the four Things campaign. Because every time people have come
together in the most difficult moments, whether it was Frederick Douglas,
Harriet Tubman, Lucretia Mott, the coming together, they were able
(19:45):
to fundamentally shift the direction of history. History is not set.
We can affect history. Is it hard? Yes, it is
gonna be childing. Yes. So some of us have decided
to say this claim that if if right now, in
this moment, but than forty eight hours, any one of
us could be on a ventilator breathing our last breath,
if that's the possibility in this moment, then what are
(20:07):
we gonna do with it? Well, one of the things
we can do with it is say, if I knew
I only had two days to breathe, what kind of
world would I fight for with my last breath? What
kind of love, what kind of greats? What kind of truth?
And then start living like that all of us we
might live forty eight more years, But in this meantime,
and I do mean meantime, in this means right that
(20:29):
we decide that we are not going to join with
the meanings, that we're going to use our last breath
and everything we have, our activism, our voting, our conversation,
our building community, because I don't have any breath to waste.
And if I'm going to honor the people who have
died and lost their breath, then the only way I
(20:49):
can honor them is to use the breath. I have
to fight for a better world that would not have
cost them their life. And I think if we do that,
we can, in fact, you out of this great moment
of despause King was, says Stone of hope. We can
be repairs of the breach. We really can be repasitive breach,
and we can be a movement. Now it's going to
(21:10):
mean we must push, push, and sometimes that's gonna mean
your friends. I'm not gonna like it necessarily, but it's
better to be pushed by our friend to be made better.
Black and white and brown and red and yellow and
gay and straight. It trans whoever we are. We are
this movement, and the last thing we can do is
(21:32):
just that Cat, you are a man after my own heart,
my friend. Yeah, I mean, that's how I feel every day,
and I cannot tell you how much I have loved
having this conversation with you. And for those who have
listened who want to hear more from Reverend Dr William Barber.
(21:52):
His sermons at his church are stream live on Facebook,
but there are so many other ways you can find him,
his writings, his speaking, his incredible work of purpose and
mission on behalf of forming, as our mutual friend John
Lewis would say, a beloved community, a community in America
that finally lives up to our our values and our faith.
(22:17):
Thank you so much, my friend. It's wonderful having this
chance to talk with you, and I look forward to
continuing the conversation. Thank you so much. If you're looking
for more wisdom from Reverend Barber, pick up a copy
of his new book, We Are Called to Be a Movement.
(22:40):
Nearly two decades ago, Christa Tippett recognized that most Americans
have a hard time talking about religion and spirituality outside
of places of worship. So she started a conversation that
continues to this day, not only with religious leaders, but
with everyone from poets to physicists. I am so excited
to dig into this topic with her. It's just a
(23:04):
sheer delight to have this chance to talk with you. Christa, Well,
it's an honor and really a delight to be here.
I particularly resonate to a saying of your describing your
own work that I read, where you seek to address
what you call a black hole where intelligent public conversation
(23:26):
about the religious, spiritual, and moral aspects of human life
might be. Krista talked to me about how you see
this present time. Are we filling the black hole? Are
we ignoring it? Uh? Where is the opportunity for what
(23:48):
I think is a much needed spiritual reckoning um about
what it means to be human and trying to be
more focused in how we live the life we are given,
both alone and in company. Yeah, well, I do agree
(24:11):
with you that as I've watched this moment, I feel
that it has brought into relief. It has surfaced that
the questions before us have deep moral content and and
in fact are about, you know, the soul of our nation.
(24:33):
And we still have to develop the muscles and the
language and the practices public practices to take those things
on together. But I think more of us are aware
that that's what we're called to do um, and theology
does have a contribution to make as part of the
human enterprise. Um. What does it mean to be human?
(24:57):
How do we want to live? And who will we
be to to each other? Those questions are so alive
in our life together right now, between our pandemic and
our racial rupture and awakening. I mean, I am really
turning now to words and practices that I feel again,
(25:22):
like I would say, have to are offered up to
all of us as part of the human enterfries of contemplation,
of repentance, of redemption, of healing, of I was talking
to some rabbis the other day about lamentations, right like
in that tradition that lamentations is supposed to be a
public practice. And I don't know about you, but that
(25:44):
word I land so um with relief in me. I
want to lament. I need to lament, and I want
to lament with others. And instead we're just so good
at all the other We leap over lament and we
point fingers and we blame and we yell and we
get mad. And there are these other places in us
(26:06):
that these traditions are the bearers are not the only bears,
but I feel like they are great resources and companions
for now. I wish there were a way as we
think about the time we're living through right now, and
how necessary it is for people to slow down, to
(26:29):
take a deep breath, to think about their lives and
the lives of those around them too, maybe explore some
of the spiritual and religious practices and the and the
and the great questions that haven't gone away just because
we don't address them. I'm with you, I you know,
my quick definition of spiritual life is befriending reality. Mm hmm,
(26:55):
unpacked that for us, unpacked that that's great to be
friend reality, which means all its complexity. Right, we are
all so complicated and our life together is so complicated,
and all of these challenges that we face are so complicated.
But resisting that complexity doesn't get us where we want
(27:17):
to go. And I think when I say that befriending
reality also, what I mean by that is that these
traditions Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, they contain not just
conversation and wisdom across time and generations about who God
might be or what transcendence is, but this matter of
(27:38):
being human, the complexity of being human, and so much
of what the traditions have taught and cultivated is now
being worn out in our disciplines of neuroscience and social psychology. So,
you know, one of the things we're learning is the
corrosive effect that fear has. When human beings are afraid,
(28:05):
we are literally unable to rise to our best selves. Right,
it's literally too much to ask of somebody's The system
is overwhelmed. Yeah, I can't do it. If you feel threatened,
the feeling of threatened is enough. You may not actually
be in danger. So that's reality. And so the pragmatism
of these spiritual tools and practices and teachings is that
(28:28):
it gives us the power to settle into our best selves,
this move of not letting fear dominate, a finding ways
to control that in ourselves, to step into our best selves,
to transmit to others that that is possible, to move
through the world that way. We cannot face the challenges
(28:50):
before us. We cannot face how we have distorted ourselves
with this construction of race. Right, I mean to name
just one of the things that is before us, which
which which kind of under has underpinned so many of
the others. If we don't find ways to rise into
the best and deepest and most complex aspects of our
(29:14):
humanity and character, our moral imagination. Oh, I feel literally
thrilled by that phrase befriending reality and your description of
what it means, what it could mean. That really is
just truly music to my ears. Christa. We'll be back
(29:35):
right after this quick break, you know, I will say,
since I'm here with you, I know and I've known this,
but I hear it in your voice, even even though
you're mostly just asking questions now. But I I know
that this is a huge part of you, the tradition
you grew up in, that there is a religious and
(29:58):
and spiritual funding to your life that I assume has
evolved because I think if if this part of life
like anything, if if you're alive, it's evolving, and you
have had an adventurous life, and um, I just think
it must have been I have thought this before. It
must have been frustrating for this, even this part of
(30:20):
yourself to not be able to show because as we
talked about, there's not a place where the complexity and
richness and fullness of this part of us, it gets
honored and has a place to show itself. I don't
know if that's a question, but well, no, but I
take it as a question because it's one that I've
(30:41):
thought about a lot. Um. I was raised as a Methodist.
I was raised, uh, you know, going to Sunday School.
I had a really influential youth minister who took us
to a different level of thinking about why and and
what it meant to be a Christian, what it meant
(31:03):
to be a person of faith. Uh. He was the
one who took me, as a young teenager to hear
Dr Martin Luther King Jr. Speak um. And he was
constantly challenging us, uh with art and poetry and different
ways of thinking about the world than the ones we
had grown up with in our suburb of Chicago. And
(31:26):
so I always believed that faith was a constant in
my life. You might hear the rain beating on the
top of the roof of my my little, my little
attic office where I am recording this, which seems kind
of appropriate. Um, But it was really difficult to ever
(31:49):
express any of these feelings or experiences, or even the
questions raised by my own faith in my own upbringing
in my own searching in my public life. For example,
when my father died, I had given, you know, several
weeks of my time by his bedside as as he
(32:13):
passed away, and I was just totally overwhelmed by what
we all experienced, that the death of a loved one.
And I had promised to speak at the University of
Texas before my father's stroke, and I was trying to
get out of it. And the indomitable was Carpenter who
(32:37):
had asked me to deliver the speech, and no, no, Hill,
are you got to come? You know, we filled the
field house tens of thousands of people. You have to come. Well,
I had no idea what I was going to say.
I didn't feel up to the occasion, but you know,
I'm a dutiful Methodist person, and so of course I went.
And it was an incredibly emotional experience for me. And
(33:01):
I talked about meaning and life and I remember just
being ridiculed by the press. Um, what right did I
have to raise these issues in public? What was a
quote first lady doing talking about issues of life and
death and meaning and spirituality. It was a very very
(33:25):
difficult um time in my life. And two feel that
I had no public outlet for exploring these issues meant
that I just became more personal, and so that was
kind of you you then decided you needed to keep
that in Yeah, and it's it in terms of a
(33:47):
personal experience, it certainly has continued. But I have felt
often that, you know, maybe if I could think of
a better way of talking about it, a more oh
understandable and acceptable way, I might possibly make a better impact.
But you know, I feel very fortunate that I've had
(34:11):
this grounding in faith, not just emotionally but intellectually. Because
I have, I have fallen back on it, you know,
time and time again. So it's it's it's challenging. If
you're in the public eye and known for being in
the public eye as a political person, there's an acceptable
(34:34):
range to talk about religion. Uh, but if you go
into these deeper questions, the press and and and certain
elements of the public get immediately anxious about it. Yeah.
We just we don't have that, We don't have the vocabulary.
I mean, I don't and and and don't think it's
somehow appropriate to have right conversation in public, like don't
(34:56):
talk about this in public for having's sakes. Yeah. I
also think that word you use searching the crazy thing
is that the religion that does get somehow sanctioned. It's
the certainty, right, it's this, it's the doctrinaire. Yes, and
that's actually not how people live this. I like you
(35:18):
just you described it's been, it's your it's somebody dies.
It's like these moments in life where it doesn't all
add up and and and nothing else is there. This
is where we are turned into our interior existence and
these questions of meaning. That makes so much sense what
you just said. And and if it's painful to me
(35:39):
from before, it's painful to hear about, well, thank you
again for spending this time with me. Thank you. You
can hear Christo Tippett every week tune into On Being
from Minnesota Public Radio and pr X. I want to
(36:03):
turn now to someone else who has shed new light
on the issue of faith, in his case through humor. Christianity.
It's the dominant religion in our country. But did you
know it's also in serious trouble. No, it's not gays,
not science, not the rual Hollywood. According to Alabama, it's
sharia law. Assif monv is perhaps best known for his
(36:27):
role as the Daily shows senior Muslim correspondent, or alternatively,
the senior foreign looking correspondent. He was also the lead
actor and co writer and producer of the web series
Halal in the Family. What a great name, they say,
if you want to make people think, try making them laugh.
And that's exactly what Ossif does, all while confronting racisms
(36:52):
and a phobia, Islamophobia and bigotry. And then there's the
latest development this past march, Assip became a dad, and
of course I wanted to hear all about that. So
before we get started on all this other stuff, what's
your son's name? His name is is Sean a mere Mandvi.
(37:13):
My wife is Hindu and I'm Muslim. So we uh,
Sean is a Hindu name, Amir is Muslim and his
initials are i am, which is uh, you know, Jewish. Yeah, yeah, wait,
So we got all the bases covered, you know, walking
advertisement exactly, major religions exactly. It was. It was actually
(37:40):
amazing because we had an interfaith wedding, Hindu Muslim wedding,
and uh, we have to make it up because you know,
there's a world in which Chifali and I would never
have gotten married, you know, that's right. And how did
you grow up? I mean, I know you spent part
of your childhood in the UK, then your family moved
(38:01):
to Florida. How did it feel to you growing up
Muslim in those two settings. Well, you know, I did
grow up Muslim, and I grew up in a relatively
religious home. My grandparents were religious, you know, so Islam
was always just part of the d n a of
my childhood. You know, maybe not ironically, but interestingly. It
(38:23):
didn't really become a thing until after nine eleven. You know,
up until then, I had this religion that felt very private,
and it felt like it was my thing that I
did with my family. We went to the mosque, sometimes,
we prayed at home, you know, we went to religious
ceremonies of things. But it never became something that was
(38:43):
looked on from the outside until after night eleven. And
then suddenly there was a different relationship to it, and
suddenly I was dealing with the explanation of it or
having to somehow defend it or somehow, you know, Islam
became politicized. But growing up, it just felt like it
(39:04):
was a very personal, private thing, and I used it
as my own way of connecting with whatever highest spirit,
you know, gone universe, whatever that is. When you think
about politicizing religion and then the Islamophobia that resulted after
(39:25):
nine eleven, you have been one of the very few
high profile people who have walked right into that. Uh you,
and I want to I want to understand your thinking
about it, because you know, I'm sure that there were
people who said, you know, don't go there, you know,
don't don't make it an issue. How did you come
(39:45):
to grips with what you wanted to do to try to,
you know, in your own way, combat what you saw
as the politicization and the really demonization in so many
different more of Islam. Well, you know it's funny because
I was, well, this is gonna Sometimes life just happens
(40:06):
to you, and what you do in that moment defines
what happens in the next moment. And for me what happened.
I wasn't trying to be political. I wasn't trying to
like be outspoken about it, even after nine eleven. Um.
I was dealing with it on a personal level, but
never in a public forum. And then the Daily Show
(40:27):
happened for me. I got this job that I never
expected to get. I never was I wasn't looking for it.
It literally happened. I went, I went to this audition,
John Stewart hired me, and suddenly I was now the
Muslim correspondent on the Daily Show, much to the terror
of my parents, who I remember saying, my dad saying
(40:50):
to me, listen, if John Stewart ever asked you anything
about Islam, you just haven't called your mother because you
don't know a damn thing, and so like so they
were terrified, and I was gonna be out there like
just you know, saying all kinds of nonsense that didn't
make any and then I what it did for me
(41:10):
was it gave me this platform. And at that time,
in two thousand and six, there were not a lot
of a lot of people representing in that way that
felt like it was truthful. I mean, you had, like,
you know, the terrorists on twenty four or you know,
I mean, I got so many scripts in the aftermath
of nine eleven where it was literally the first scene
(41:31):
of the movie or the TV show is the towers
coming down and and Muslims cheering and praying every script.
And so this was the first time there was something
where like I thought, oh, this is a an actual conversation,
like we're actually talking about this. And I think that
when I got on the Daily Show, I ended up
(41:52):
there and I thought to myself, Okay, this is what
I'm gonna end up being. And I realized like, oh,
there was a need for it. So I leaned into it,
and then I found a voice around it. Then as
I stepped into it further and further, I realized, oh,
this is I'm actually finding a voice that I had
(42:16):
not allowed myself to find. So sometimes it's just about
being given the opportunity to express that. And then you
realize like, I got a lot to say, you know,
I didn't know that I had this much to say
around this. Yeah, and let let me sort of bring
this back to both faith but also fatherhood. So here
you are a new father, um, thinking about all that's
(42:41):
going on in the world around you. How do you
hope the world looks you know, in five years when
he starts school, in eighteen years when he graduates from
high school, and how do you see how raising your
son at this moment is going to play out? Well,
(43:02):
I feel I I do believe, And then and you know,
maybe This is the glass half full guy in me,
which is that I do believe that after a breakdown,
there is a breakthrough, and if we're going through some
kind of sort of profound breakdown, there is going to
be a moment a breakthrough. And I also believe something
that I discovered recently, which is the difference for me
(43:23):
between faith and belief, you know, and belief is I
believe something is going to happen. I believe that I'm
gonna get that job, or I believe that I'm gonna,
you know, be whatever it is. Faith is understanding that
no matter what happens, I have the capacity to move
forward and to be okay. And that is something that
(43:48):
I feel like I want my son to understand. It's
a it's a much more difficult thing to inhabit, which
is this idea that like I'm going to be and
we will be okay no matter why what happens, and
that is faith and that that we cannot be destroyed
because faith is larger than that version. You know. Yes,
(44:08):
I love that, and I'm with you in hoping that
you know, this breakdown leads through a breakthrough. Yeah, but
I just can't thank you enough. I loved love talking
to you. I just wish the best for you and
your wife and your son. Thank you so much. This
has been such a pleasure. Thanks so much. When he's
(44:30):
not changing diapers, Ossip Munby has his hands and many
new projects, including a highly entertaining new supernatural drama series
called Evil on CBS. Check it out. You and Me
Both is brought to you by I Heart Radio. We're
produced by Julie Subran and Kathleen Russo, with help from
(44:52):
Huma Aberdeen, Nikki etur Oscar Flores, Brianna Johnson, Nick Merrill,
Lauren Peterson, Rob Russo, and Lona Valmorrow. Our engineer is
Zach McNeice. Original music is by Forest Gray. If you
like You and Me Both, don't keep it to yourself.
(45:12):
Tell a friend. You can subscribe to You and Me
Both on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you get your podcasts. While you're there, leave us
a review. I'd really appreciate it. We'd love to hear
from you, so send us your questions, comments, or ideas
for future shows at You and Me Both pod at
(45:33):
gmail dot com. Come back next week when we're talking
to some amazing women leaders, including the one and only
Gloria steinhum
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